Waltham Forest: Police are to carry out a series of raids on crack houses in Waltham Forest in a bid to halt the borough's spiralling drugs problem.

At least one crack house is raided in the borough each week and borough commander Superintendent Dave Grant said his officers aimed to target suspected drugs dens within ten working days of a genuine tip-off.

Last week, drugs minister Bob Ainsworth warned communities across the country that unless they helped police fight the nationwide drugs boom, it would spiral out of control.

Supt Grant reinforced the message this week, saying Waltham Forest residents must assist police by tipping them off if they suspected a neighbour of running a crack den.

"It doesn't matter how the information comes to us, we just need to know where these places are," he said. "You can write anonymously, tell your local councillor or drop in to a police station. If we have enough intelligence that someone is running a crack house, we will doing everything we can to shut them down."

The borough has seen a rise in drug crime and the number of people possessing and supplying Class A narcotics in recent years, but Supt Grant said the problem had not yet reached "epidemic" proportions.

"Crack houses generate street crime and we've had a huge rise in street crime this year as people thieve to feed their habits.

"We have raided seven houses since April and we have several more targeted which we will be raiding in the next few days.

"In May this year we had a spate of robberies at 7am in Leyton and Leytonstone. They were all linked to two crack houses in the area, and after we arrested a couple of people and shut the drug dens down the robberies stopped."

Supt Grant urged people whose lives were being made a misery by living near a crack house to act now and get the occupants jailed or evicted.

Police work with the local authority to turf out dealers and board up their houses.

"It can be a nightmare for people living near a crack house as visitors will come at all hours of the day and night, and they have no respect for anything. All they care about is getting drugs, and the whole area gets dragged down by having these people around. They are unsavoury characters."

He said he wanted to reassure people that information could be passed to police while still guaranteeing their anonymity.

"We want to break the cycle of fear that stops people giving us information," he said.

"Communities can play a big part in tackling the problem of drug possession and supply. But we need people to tell us where these people are. If we have evidence then we will act on it, and if we fail to get a prosecution the first time we will go back again and again until we succeed."

Anyone wanting to pass information to police can ring the intelligence unit on 8345 2372, or CrimeStoppers on 0800 55 51 11.

July 8, 2002 09:30