Drug raids on a high in Birmingham

Yet another cannabis factory has been raided by West Midlands Police, this time in Quinton, South West Birmingham.

The crop, estimated to be worth £190,000, was seized by police officers on the Welsh House Farm estate, Blandford road.

Officers forced their way into the three bedroom property at 4am on Tuesday morning after being tipped off by local residents that something suspicious was going on inside the house.

Inside, the police found 670 cannabis plants and a robust arsenal of hydroponic lighting which is used to grow super strength strands of the drug.

PC Ben Albutt told the Birmingham mail: “This is one of the biggest ever busts in Quinton.”

A man was later arrested on suspicion of cultivating the drug.

Elsewhere, in the North side of the city, Thornhill road police officers cleverly piled into an unmarked transit van parked on Soho Road, Handsworth. From this position they were able to spy on local drug dealers who had been peddling narcotics quite openly outside shops on Soho Road in recent months.

On 26^th March, around mid afternoon a gang of police officers charged out of the removals van in an attempt to ambush drug dealers who have been openly selling drugs on street corners.

The operation, that was codenamed Rahua, instantly caused a cat and mouse chase between police officers and, desperate to escape, drug peddlers on Soho Road. One of the men involved managed to escape the police on Soho Road and tried to find refuge inside a local bookmakers. The police burst into the betting shop armed with narcotics sniffer dogs that soon sniffed out the man they were searching for.

The police made a total of eight arrests during the disguised blitz on the streets of Handsworth and they have vowed to increase patrols in the area to keep the upper hand in their ever ongoing war against drugs.