INVESTIGATION: On the line - a family business
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Part one of a five-part special investigation into county lines drug dealing, running in audio, video, print and digital from The Times and The Sunday Times.
Today we reveal how police took down the family controlling the drug trade in one British city, creating a power vacuum that was filled by a new breed of violent, criminal operation - county lines.
The Sunday Times' northern editor David Collins is given unprecedented access to North Yorkshire Police as they fight back against the drug gangs.
This podcast was brought to you thanks to the support of readers of The Times and The Sunday Times. Subscribe today: http://thetimes.com/thestory
Read more: Exposed: how drug gangs deal without fear as the law can’t keep up | I was a county lines drug runner. I tried to quit, then I was stabbed
Watch: School-age kingpins: why children now hold the key to county lines
Host: David Collins
Producers: Kate Lamble, Taryn Siegel
Executive producers: Tim Walklate, Dan Box
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Photo: Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 0:07.0 | It's just gone 6am and a group of police officers have pulled up to an estate west of Bradford's city centre. |
| 0:20.0 | They're in stab vests and wearing |
| 0:23.4 | evidence collection gloves, moving quietly through the darkness. Or as quiet as 20 police |
| 0:30.3 | officers can. Radios turned down. Hoping the person they're heading to arrest won't be alerted. |
| 0:40.5 | The officers gather in the front garden. |
| 0:44.2 | And then the quiet turns to noise. |
| 0:49.5 | A ripsaw tears through the centre of the plastic front door. |
| 0:58.0 | Police! or tears through the centre of the plastic front door. The people inside are understandably terrified. |
| 1:04.0 | But an arrest is made. |
| 1:08.0 | But an arrest is made. |
| 1:13.6 | The man handcuffed and led to a waiting van had for the past year controlled a significant chunk of the crack cocaine and heroin market in York, |
| 1:23.6 | a city more than 40 miles away. |
| 1:26.6 | Coordinating the sale of Class A drugs |
| 1:29.3 | through what's known as a county line. |
| 1:36.3 | There are more than 6,000 across the UK, |
| 1:39.3 | a business police believe has caused an explosion of violence. |
| 1:45.0 | I think for me personally I've just come back to York, you know, |
| 1:48.0 | went to a different force, then came back to York and |
| 1:51.0 | probably because I had a bit of a fresh pair of eyes, |
| 1:55.0 | thinking this has changed, something's changed here. |
| 1:59.0 | Detective Chief Inspector Sean Page is responsible for investigating serious crime in York. |
... |
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