A VIOLENT and organised crime gang that infiltrated a Scottish town has been disbanded, a police chief has said.
DCI Bryan Burns, from CID in the Scottish Borders, said the gang had been "well beyond" anything they had dealt with before as he outlined the success of what was dubbed "Operation Jabiru" in Hawick.
Speaking at a meeting of the council’s Police, Fire and Safer Communities Board, he said: “These were incidents that occurred in the tail-end of last year in Hawick when it was subject to infiltration by a Liverpool organised crime group, a particularly violent group that were looking to branch out their tentacles into other areas and who identified Hawick as a possible option.
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“We can say we hadn’t seen the tactics by them before – they were counter surveillance-aware – a very much switched on group who were well beyond what we had encountered in the past in the local area.
“We had to act quickly to stamp on this so we started an operation called Operation Jabiru, which is a proactive crime team that was deployed that started in Hawick using the four ‘Ds’ strategy – deter, divert, disrupt and detect.
“Not only did we identify and recover drugs and cash from them we also made it impossible for them to operate on a daily basis and as a result of which they have disbanded and they are no longer active in the area”.
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DCI Burns said Operation Jabiru also led to the seizure of heroin and cocaine – worth more than £100,000 – recovered from two Galashiels addresses.
The police chief also said the cost of living crisis was leading to more people turning to crime.
He explained: “There are a lot of people struggling out there and as we’ve seen in the past, and as we expected, when we are in times when money is tight people go back to criminality for significant period of times.
“From the 90s there were things like lead from church roofs being stolen, we’re going back to that level of crme when people are desperate to get money here, money there”.
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