INVESTIGATION: On the line - the loophole
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Children aren't just running drugs for county lines gangs - sometimes they're running the lines themselves.
Today The Sunday Times's northern editor David Collins talks to the police officers who worry laws designed to protect victims of exploitation might actually encourage gang leaders to promote teenagers into higher positions in their criminal organisation.
This is episode three 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.
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: Drug gangs swamped York. This is how police stopped them | 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 and Taryn Siegel
Executive producers: Tim Walklate and Dan Box
We want to hear from you - email: thestory@thetimes.com
Photo: Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the Times and Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 0:06.0 | It's October 2023. |
| 0:16.0 | Police officers are patrolling the east of Leeds when they spot someone in a balaclava. |
| 0:23.6 | It's autumn and a bit cold, but this, this is suspicious. |
| 0:29.6 | The figure starts to run before they duck into a shop and remove the disguise, only to |
| 0:38.9 | be turfed out immediately, because shop staff recognise him. |
| 0:44.0 | In fact, he's already been banned. |
| 0:49.5 | 18-year-old Solomon Samrari is arrested. |
| 0:53.0 | Police find roughly £400 of crack cocaine and heroin on him |
| 0:56.6 | and a phone which they will later tell the court shows clear evidence of drug dealing. |
| 1:02.3 | He admits supplying Class A drugs and is sent to a young offender's institution. |
| 1:09.5 | Fast forward just over a year to January 2025 and once again. |
| 1:15.1 | There was an arrest of someone called Solomon Samwari. |
| 1:19.7 | Again on drug-related charges. |
| 1:22.5 | And this time, police officers 25 miles away in York paid attention. |
| 1:30.3 | They'd recently launched Operation Titan, a force-wide effort to tackle county lines drug dealing, |
| 1:34.3 | and Sam Rawi had already caught their eye. |
| 1:41.3 | The belief was that he was in the early days the person in charge of the Sam line. |
| 1:47.0 | Sam was then one of 20 county lines running into the city, selling crack cocaine and heroin via text message. |
| 2:08.7 | It was one of the first lines along with the Diego line that brought with it the most amount of risk |
| 2:14.6 | and was probably one of the main reasons that Titan was formed. |
| 2:18.3 | Because early on it was identified that Sam and Diego were warring groups in West Yorkshire. |
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