UK-based Albanian crime groups are openly posting videos of cannabis farms on social media they claim are in London and other UK cities. A new map reveals in London and other parts of England you could be living next door to one of these farms.
An Express probe has uncovered efforts from cannabis suppliers to entice Albanians to move to the UK and work in these cannabis houses, stating they could earn between £5,000-6,000 a month. Social media posts on Instagram and TikTok show industrial scale cannabis production allegedly taking place in London.
One particular TikTok video labelled as being in London features a massive pile of what appears to be cocaine, while an Instagram post claiming to be in Manchester shows a tabby cat and packet of Swan cigarette filters beside a huge pile of seemingly cannabis buds.
Multiple Instagram accounts were found which glorified the production of cannabis in Britain with titles or descriptions that identified the user as being based in Birmingham. The West Midlands city is also tagged as the location in a video from inside a cannabis farm where a gun and large hunting knife are brandished between the stalks of a cannabis plant.
Another different clip circulating on TikTok appears to show a drug house robbery by a Turkish gang and claims farms were also operating in Newcastle, Southampton, Kent and Leeds. The Express showed this evidence to former Metropolitan Police officer turned consultant Graham Wettone who said it demonstrated the massive growth in the number of UK cannabis farms now in operation.
“It’s clearly got bigger and bigger,” he told the Express. “You’re talking about farms as opposed to one house. Previously, part of the investigation used to be driving around and trying to find residences within, like city centres, where all the windows were blacked out, but there’s a lot of heat coming from the property.
“Heat seeking technology let us find out which houses were generating more heat and where they were trying to create almost like a greenhouse effect.
“But now we’re talking about farms as opposed to houses. [Some are] outside of towns [and cities] where policing isn’t as widespread or hasn’t got the same scope as within city centres.
“It takes about three months from germination to the plant being cultivated and produced into a controlled drug.”
Wettone said the scale of the issue was so large it was impossible for the police to get a handle on it and crack down on all the gangs controlling the drug farms.
He continued: “It’s like there’s a hole in the bucket, you keep filling it up with water, but it’s leaking. There was an operation a couple of weeks ago, when over a thousand [drug] phone lines were shut down. A thousand people safeguarded and a number of arrests across the country.
“That operation would have taken months to put together [and would have required] numerous resources from policing to carry out. They can’t be doing that every single day or every week. But it’s almost like you need to run the operation every week.
“[As it currently stands] you’re waiting for one of those big ‘weeks of action’ to try and target some of the more prominent [drug dealing operations]. It then comes down to priorities; you’ve probably got a number of addresses or venues you want to go and visit and maybe arrest the people. But you’ve got to prioritise which ones are achievable. So it’s almost like a management process.”
In response to the Express’s investigation the National Crime Agency said it “pursues and disrupts the organised crime groups presenting the greatest risk to the UK’s security and economy. We work with partners in the UK and all around the world, including in Albania, to understand the threat, identify the most harmful suspects and networks, and ultimately protect the UK public from serious and organised crime.”
Source: MyLondon
