INVESTIGATION: On the line - Whack-a-mole
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the final episode of our county lines series, we hear how county lines drug gangs are continuing to shift their business model to avoid detection. Policing minister, Sarah Jones, explains how the government is planning to fight back. Plus, The Times’ crime editor David Woode sits down with The Sunday Times’ northern editor David Collins to discuss what they've learnt about the inner workings of county lines gangs.
This is episode five 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
Host: David Woode
Producers: Kate Lamble, Edward Drummond, and Taryn Siegel
We want to hear from you - email: thestory@thetimes.com
Read more: I joined the police on a county lines crackdown
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 0:10.0 | It's quite a dark, drizzly morning in mid-October. |
| 0:16.0 | We are stood on a residential street, very narrow terrace houses in the middle of Walsall. |
| 0:26.8 | It's 6 o'clock in the morning. |
| 0:28.8 | And about 30 minutes ago, 10 officers silently marched up to a door, surrounded it, |
| 0:38.3 | and used a battering ram. |
| 0:41.3 | One, two, three. |
| 0:45.3 | To force entry. |
| 0:49.3 | Piled inside. |
| 0:57.8 | The father was quite alarmed. |
| 1:04.2 | And we noticed the next door neighbor hanging out the window, asking what was going on, |
| 1:08.0 | various curtains twitching on the surrounding properties. |
| 1:11.6 | They went upstairs and detained one suspect. Please stayer! |
| 1:13.6 | It's a warrant. |
| 1:15.6 | Hang up the phone. |
| 1:17.6 | A man who's bleater in his late 20s. |
| 1:19.6 | Young South Asian man wearing a baby blue track suit |
| 1:25.6 | and he was led towards an unmarked car. He stuck his little finger up at us |
| 1:31.4 | and was put in the back of the car and driven to custody. |
| 1:39.0 | 23-year-old Muhammad Kashid pleaded guilty to supplying Class A drugs through the Frosty Line, |
| 1:44.9 | a county line drug operation which had for mumps been selling crack cocaine and heroin over the phone. |
| 1:51.6 | I'm David Wood, the crime editor at the Times. |
... |
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