17 arrested as Manchester gangs living 'Love Island lifestyle' smashed in police dawn raids

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Seventeen suspects have been arrested after an undercover operation to smash gangs supplying crack cocaine and heroin to Manchester's homeless. Dawn raids were carried out after an eight-month investigation into drugs being sold openly on the street, just a mile from the city centre.

Police believe six drugs lines run from Miles Platting and Beswick have been smashed after officers posed as drug users to buy crack and recorded the deals. Operation Comanche was launched after families in both areas have had to live with brazen selling of drugs daily.

Both districts have seen colossal investment in recent years in new homes built round the Ashton and Rochdale Canals. But they have been blighted by dealers who are making huge profits to finance flash lifestyles peddling misery to the homeless.

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One suspect has been spending £1,500 a month hiring a top-of-the-range car. Cash is also being splashed on designer clothes, jewellery, and watches.

Detective Sergeant Dan Pickavance, of GMP's North Manchester Division, said: "It is very lucrative indeed. They are preying on their vulnerabilities. The people we have identified as being behind this, are themselves living Love Island lifestyles, on the back of selling heroin to drug users.

"It is absolutely disgraceful. It is disgusting. I hate it."

Rivalry between different drugs factions is behind a spate of tit-for-tat shootings in the districts. As well as supplying homeless with drugs, the gangs have also made Miles Platting a place for "functioning" addicts to buy.

In dawn raids today eight people were held - seven men and one woman - on suspicion of offering to supply undercover