Police in Mansfield seize more than £1.2million in cannabis

Since July 1 officers have seized and destroyed a total of 1,888 plants during a series of raids.

Left undiscovered the plants would have a street value of more than £1.2million.

The news comes around a week after members of the Mansfield neighbourhood policing team – alerted by to a strong smell – discovered more than 500 plants at rented house in Victoria Street.

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Another high-profile raid took place at a factory in Rosemary Street on Thursday 23 July when drugs worth more than £600,000 were uncovered. Left undiscovered the building would have been expanded to house even more plants.

The local neighbourhood team have uncovered seven grows in the Mansfield and Warsop areas since July 1, up from two in 2019 and four in 2018. The grows they have uncovered are also far larger than in previous years, leading to a large increase in the number of plants recovered.

Inspector Nick Butler, district commander for Mansfield, said: “I don’t believe that this problem is any worse in Mansfield than it is anywhere else, but over past couple of months we have carried out a steady stream of intelligence-led raids on properties across the district.

“I think part of that increase can be linked to the period of Coronavirus lockdown, when people spending ever more time at home noticing, smelling and reporting things that they may not have been oblivious to before.

“But there’s also something else going on here. I think people are people are simply fed up with this issue and are no longer willing to turn a blind eye to it."

Cannabis is a Class B drug that is illegal to possess or supply. In order to successfully grow the plants and harvest their leaves, criminals often take over rented residential or commercial properties before installing an array of sophisticated lighting and ventilation equipment to make them grow.

To this end they almost always bypass electrical meter to avoid detection – an action that poses a significant fire risk.

Inspector Butler added: “These are seriously nasty individuals who are willing to use extreme violence in our community to protect their investment.

“They can also be linked to people trafficking and slavery offences, where vulnerable people are forced to work in these buildings under quite appalling conditions. We simply won’t tolerate that and aim to send a very clear message to anyone who thinks they can cultivate drugs on our town: we are watching you and we will continue to destroy your equipment and your plants.

“Ultimately we want to make Mansfield as unattractive a place to do business as possible to every type of drug dealer. But we can’t do that alone. We need the public to keep reporting their suspicions to us by calling 101 or contacting Crimestoppers in confidence. We will take tall reports seriously and we will act if we have sufficient evidence."

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