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From low-level drug dealer to human trafficker,

are modern slavery laws catching the wrong people by Francisco Garcia. Garcia. When armed police burst through his front door in Tottenham, North London at 5am in September

2014,

Glo de Wabalua knew things look bad.

The house was full of drug paraphernalia,

including a hydraulic press, scales and mixing bowls, as well as a mobile phone full of incriminating

texts, advertising deals for crack cocaine and heroin.

The case went to trial in February 2016 and Wabalua's two co-defendants who like him were age 20 received 10 and 11 year sentences.

Wabalua who had lodged an early guilty plea a year before, was handed six years for dealing

class A drugs.

He was not new to the criminal justice system, having already served three years for drug offenses in his teens,

but soon he would be charged with an even more serious crime.

The dawn raid had been the result of a month's long investigation by the Metropolitan Police

Gang Unit.

In spring 2014, five teenagers from London had been picked up by police in Portsmouth for dealing Class A drugs.

They were initially charged, but the focus of the investigation subsequently changed

so that the five teenagers were treated as victims of a network of established

dealers based in London of which Wabalua and his associates with the alleged ringleaders.

Cases of inner city teenagers posted to provincial towns to deal drugs

had been on the rise nationwide,

...