INVESTIGATION: On the line - a family business

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Story – INVESTIGATION: On the line - a family business (21 March 2026)
Hosted by: The Times
Episode Theme:
An in-depth investigation into the dramatic transformation of York’s drug trade—how a notorious family’s empire controlled the Class A market for a decade, their eventual downfall, and how county lines syndicates moved in, reshaping crime and violence in the city.

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Main Theme

The episode traces the rise and fall of York’s infamous Deer family drugs operation, illustrating how their tightly-controlled, “family business” model of drug dealing gave way to the decentralized, violent, and technologically savvy county lines networks. It explores the impact on York's community, the law enforcement struggle, and the evolving faces of both criminals and victims.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Setting and Scale of the Problem

• York’s Distinctive Landscape: The story highlights the striking contrast between York’s picturesque, historic city centre (“the chocolate box bit,” [05:38] Peter Roderick) and the reality of deprivation and violence in certain outer suburbs.
• “Pretty much everything in the yellow is ancient, roman, Viking, medieval, etc.” – [05:23] Peter Roderick
• County lines explained: How drug networks now operate phone-based supply chains from outside cities, with over 6,000 county lines identified across the UK.

2. The Deer Family Empire (10+ Years)

• Dominance: The Deer family, based on a traveller’s site, monopolized York’s heroin and crack cocaine market for more than a decade, using intimidation to keep rivals out.
  • “The Deer family, who pretty much had the market for heroin and cocaine… quite a feared family. Other drug dealing networks… would know not to work on their patch.” – [07:40] Detective Adam Heatley
• Methods:
  • Drugs stashed in fields, dug up by couriers and distributed to local user-dealers.
  • Family loyalty and remoteness shielded the gang from police interference.
  • “He had a very pleasant manner, as he would say, it’s my job to not be caught and your job to catch me.” – [08:44] Detective Adam Heatley

3. Takedown & Aftermath

• Police strategy: Surveillance, field stakeouts, and phone record analysis enabled law enforcement to seize key drug caches and build a case.
  • "We could then implement our tactics to sort of force them out of doing what they were doing." – [14:19] Detective Adam Heatley
• Turning point: Removal of a main stash forced Alfred Deer, head of the family, to personally intervene, providing crucial evidence.
  • “He’s clearly very upset about something... Frustration, anger, lots of arms being thrown around and what’s happening...” – [16:36] Detective Adam Heatley
• Impact: 13 arrested, 11 pled guilty; Alfred Deer convicted in absentia, later captured.
  • “You invest a lot of your life in it as a detective... I’d be lying. It’s not unusual to go for a pint after a trial, but then the day after you’re back on the job.” – [17:44] Detective Adam Heatley

4. The Rise of County Lines (Post-Deer Family)

• Vacuum filled instantly:
  • “There’s a vacuum for a day or two and that is just an opening for another OCG.” – [18:13] Detective Adam Heatley
• County line mechanics: Modern networks operate via branded burner phones, remain physically distant, and use runners (often local and young) to handle street dealing and take all risks.
  • “Your line holder typically will never be in the area... They distance themselves from the users.” – [24:41] Sergeant Mike Brocken
• Phone-based marketing: County lines use mass texts and distinct personalities (“Sam line,” “Teddy line,” “Banksy line”) to build brand loyalty and out-sell rivals.
  • “2 for 20, 3 for 50. Best banging shots... Any of this lingo sent in bulk.” – [25:54] Sergeant Mike Brocken
• Comparison of lines: New lines use heavy advertising and deals; established ones (like the Teddy line) rely on reputation and a consistent customer base.
  • “Teddy line is like your Tesco, your Sainsbury’s... Sam line is your new up and coming supermarket, discount supermarket.” – [30:23] Sergeant Mike Brocken

5. Escalating Violence and Exploitation

• Weaponry and “taxing”: Greater competition leads to turf wars, robberies ("taxing"), and attacks with machetes/axes.
  • “Very often we see machetes, weapons, axes… They’re not afraid to use them.” – [31:19] Detective Adam Heatley
• Child exploitation: The new business model relies on the exploitation and disposability of children (as young as 14) as runners, both as cheap labor and as a shield for ring-leaders.
  • “We’re talking about 15, 16, 17 year old vulnerable kids... It’s very rarely the OCG heads who sit in a comfy chair with the line dictating what happens.” – [32:43] Detective Adam Heatley

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the change in local crime:
  • “This can’t be right, that, you know, we’re just picking up the pieces from the assaults, the murders, the serious violence. It was quite stark.” – [03:16] Detective Chief Inspector Sean Page
• On the Deer family’s secrecy:
  • “The community they live in is very remote, very hard to reach... You certainly wouldn’t be welcomed onto the site as a police officer.” – [09:06] Detective Adam Heatley
• On the marketing tactics of county lines:
  • “It is marketing ultimately. It's trying to get their customer base to buy from them as opposed to another county line... No different to your television adverts.” – [28:02] Sergeant Mike Brocken
• On the impact of police work:
  • “You invest a lot of your life in it as a detective... I’d be lying. It's not unusual to go for a pint after a trial, but then the day after you’re back on the job.” – [17:44] Detective Adam Heatley

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:35] – The police raid on York’s county lines kingpin
• [05:23] – York’s geography and its economic/ethnic divisions
• [07:14] – Arrival of county lines, shift from local to regional networks
• [08:44] – Personal account of Alfred Deer and his business approach
• [10:35] – How the Deer family structured their operation
• [14:19] – The turning point in the Deer investigation
• [17:19] – Alfred Deer’s conviction and aftermath
• [21:17] – Fast-forward: Modern police vs. new breed of dealers
• [24:41] – How a county line operates, explained
• [25:54] – Live reading and decoding of county line marketing messages
• [28:23] – Branding tactics and how lines differentiate
• [31:19] – Violence and “taxing” among county lines gangs
• [32:43] – Exploitation of children and vulnerabilities

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Tone and Style

The episode is immersive, gritty, and factual, combining field reporting, interviews, and direct police testimony. It balances vivid local color (“cobbled street,” “wizard themed gift shops”) with hard-hitting realities of organized crime and its effect on the vulnerable.

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Next Episode Teaser

York police, having recognized the futility of chasing low-level runners, aim to “take the fight directly to those sat in their armchairs coordinating everything” through Operation Titan. The story continues in the next episode.

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Summary By: Your Podcast Summarizer – March 2026

Transcript

[Narrator/Host]

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[David Collins]

From the Times and the Sunday Times. This is the story. It's just gone 6am and a group of police officers have pulled up to an estate west of Bradford city centre. They're in stab vests and wearing evidence collection gloves, moving quietly through the darkness, or as quietly as 20 police officers can. Radios turned down, hoping the person they're heading to arrest won't be alerted, the officers gather in the front garden. And then the quiet turns to noise. A rip saw tears through the center of the plastic front door. The people inside are understandably terrified. But an arrest is made. 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, a city more than 40 miles away, coordinating the sale of Class A drugs through what's known as a county line. There are more than 6,000 across the UK, a business police believe has caused an explosion of violence. I think for me personally, I've just come back to York, you know, worked in a different force, then came back to York and probably because I had a bit of a fresh pair of eyes thinking this has changed, something's changed here. Detective Chief Inspector Sean Page is responsible for investigating serious crime in York. This can't be right, that, you know, we're just picking up the pieces from the assaults, the murders, the serious violence. It was quite stark. Burglary, car crime, domestic violence. These crimes the city was familiar with. But now he says things were different. A young adult was attacked on the river path in hospital with a bleed on the brain. A 14 year old boy stabbed three men with machetes attacking a guest house. All cases linked to warring groups of County Lines drug dealers. We needed to do something, getting a grip before we're trying to deal with people who have been stabbed or threatened. Cuckoo. Whatever it might be. I'm David Collins, the northern editor of the Sunday Times. Last year, North Yorkshire Police gave me unprecedented access as they set out to tackle the County Line's drug dealers. It's a subject we'll be sticking with all week. This is the story of how York fought back. The story today on the Line, Episode one, the Family business. York's narrow medieval streets packed with tourists are wrapped around an ancient cathedral. York Minster.

[Peter Roderick]

Pretty much everything in the yellow is ancient, roman, Viking, medieval, etc.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Etc.

[David Collins]

Peering over the map is Peter Roderick, Director of Public Health for York City Council. He knows the area better than anyone.

[Peter Roderick]

So you've got the chocolate box bit of York. You get off at the station here and you walk to the Minster and

[David Collins]

you walk through cobbled street leaning timber frame buildings, wizard themed gift shops. It's not an obvious place to go searching for the drugs trade.

[Peter Roderick]

The shambles is there. That's what York is known for. York then has quite a lot of rural land villages like Strensall, Poppleton, which is where I live, Cotmanthorpe, Elvington. Those also are very sort of posh affluent and they definitely mean York's residents seen on average. You know, we're quite affluent and we live quite long.

[David Collins]

York has a violent crime rate lower than comparable cities like Canterbury or Bath. But some areas still stand out.

[Peter Roderick]

What you get is a number of outer suburbs within the inner ring road, the most deprived of which is Westfield along here. So the Chapelfields Estate, Foxwood, Corlands Road, Tudor Road, that sort of stuff. These bits of the city, we're less ethnically diverse and more economically disadvantaged.

[David Collins]

And it's here, Peter says, the demand for Heroin and crack cocaine is strongest. The drugs typically supplied by county lines. The county line model, where drug sales are coordinated over the phone, even from another city, was first identified by the met police around 10 years ago. So to understand where these lines came from and how they came to invade York, we first have to go back.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

It's probably the last five or six years that it's really taken off. Prior to that, it was local dealing.

[David Collins]

Adam Heatley has been a detective for 25 years, part of the Organised Crime Unit. He's a pretty straightforward guy, not used to podcast interviews, but Adam has firsthand experience of how county lines arrived in York because he took down a gang which every officer I speak to recognizes.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

The Deer family, who pretty much had the market for heroin and cocaine, certainly in the York area. Quite a feared family. Other drug dealing networks were there, but not to their level and they would know not to work on their patch.

[David Collins]

How long were they in control, would you say, of the drugs market in York?

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Over 10 years. I mean, the only reason it lapsed was because the head of the ocg, or Organised Crime Group, Alfred Dare Senior, was previously convicted for a nine or ten year sentence for the same thing. So while he was incarcerated, there was a lapse, albeit the family members took up the mantle and carried on the business, shall we say, but not to the extent of when Deer Senior got released again. The empire began again, shall we say.

[David Collins]

In 2018, Alfred Deer was out of prison and with his three sons, he'd rebuilt his empire from a traveller's site on the eastern edge of York to control the drugs trade across the city. Can you talk to me a bit about Alfred? What was he like?

[Detective Adam Heatley]

A character. He was actually quite a gentleman to deal with. He was very respectful of the place. He wasn't one to be fighting with the police or kicking off when arrested. He had a very pleasant manner, as he would say, it's my job to not be caught and your job to catch me.

[David Collins]

Would he say that?

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Pretty much. Words to that effect, yeah. And he didn't get caught too often.

[David Collins]

Why was that?

[Detective Adam Heatley]

The community they live in is very remote, very hard to reach on the actual sites where they live. They're very much family members or friends and family. You certainly wouldn't be welcomed onto the site as a police officer. It's quite intimidating place, or it can be. The police wouldn't often go on site unless absolutely necessary.

[David Collins]

So we're currently walking in an industrial estate in York just outside the city center. I wanted to see where the Deer family Operated for myself. We've just gone past a microbrewery, there's a steel and concrete plant behind us. And, and I was just thinking to myself, if you were going to run a drugs empire, this is probably quite a good place to do it because it's away from the general public, it's really kind of quite private. It's a bit of a rabbit warren, isn't it? I don't know if there's an entrance to the back end here or. It's a sort of place, though. Well, I imagine word travels quickly if you're in this little patch, because everybody will know each other and we're now walking through it. The wasteland which surrounds the site quickly dissolves into muddy tracks and fields, a landscape the family used to evade the police.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

The drugs would be stashed in fields, buried, dug, hidden, marked with something only they would know to find.

[David Collins]

Detective Adam Heatley from the Organized Crime Unit, I'm guessing, did what? They just literally dug a hole in the fields.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Yeah.

[David Collins]

Put £100,000 worth of heroin in a hole, covered it up.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Yeah. And marked it with something. Only there it wasn't out of place, if you know what I mean. I wouldn't walk past it and go, oh, what's that? But to them it's a marker to say, oh, yeah, so they don't forget where it is, effectively. And then daily a courier would arrive, one of three or four couriers that they had who would collect an amount from the larger stash, take it to the dealers. The dealers then supply from their addresses. They probably are users themselves, getting paid in drugs rather than cash.

[David Collins]

So they wouldn't deal at street level, they'd be more the York's wholesaler, if you like.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Yeah. So the Dare family would be the wholesale side of it. Couriers would literally just run from the site to a dealer house. The dealer house would be a user, effectively heroin and cocaine or crack cocaine user, who would then do the dealing. Anything between 150, 200 wraps a day, 10 pound a wrap, several houses doing that.

[David Collins]

It was an illegal business empire, making thousands of pounds a day. And Alfred being an old fashioned type of drug dealer, he's running it in an old fashioned way. He controls the supply of drugs in the city he lives in and scares off other organised criminals, almost doing the police's job for them in some respects. And while police would eventually find a quarter of a million pounds in cash, along with a pile of old betting slips for the horse racing, Alfred wasn't the type to flaunt his wealth.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

He had an okay car. He had a very tidy, nice caravan where he lived with his children. All had their own vans as well on the site. On the face of it, he just was a family man going about his daily business.

[David Collins]

Investigators needed to prove that wasn't the real story, so they set up surveillance, taking photos across the fields to trace where the drugs were being stored. Police started to cautiously step in, seizing pieces of the gang's stash to disrupt their sales. A hidden battleground on the edge of the city. Amazingly, across the fields, I can actually see York Minster on the horizon, just poking up above the tree line. It's the two sides, isn't it? Just over there, it's all the restaurants and bars, the cobbled streets. And here we are on the very fringe of the city centre, literally outside a traveler's camp which used to run the city's drug supply for 10 years. I've been given some photos from the investigation showing where the deers were hiding drugs, and I wanted to find some of those same spots in the fields today. But even with those images, my producer and I are having trouble telling one patch of mud from the rock which used to hide a heroin stash. So we've got a glimpse of a pylon, and it's kind of halfway up a hill, isn't it, with a field and a track that bends around tree here.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

So it must be.

[David Collins]

That's a good point. Actually. I think that would make that more because of the cluster of trees over there.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Cut across this field.

[David Collins]

Yeah.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

And have a look down there.

[David Collins]

We do have to go past the donkey.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

You worried about the donkey?

[David Collins]

I don't know. Might bite us, who knows?

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Once we knew where the stash points were, we could then implement our tactics to sort of force them out of doing what they were doing. And it was at that point when we seized probably over a kilo, I think's, worth of heroin in various batches. Took out some couriers, established more of the network of how they communicated and the things that we're saying between the family members on their personal handsets rather than dealer phones.

[David Collins]

You were seizing handsets and interrogating the phones?

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Collins]

Photos and phone records allowed Adam's team to build up a pretty clear idea of how the operation worked. They just needed to trace the orders all the way up to the head of the family. But wary from his previous arrest, Alfred didn't touch the stash at all.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

We believed he effectively pushed everything down the chain to his three sons. But in particular, his elders, Alfred Jr, who one day went to the stash point, but we'd removed the stash overnight. Clearly that was going to upset him. There was hundreds of thousand pounds worth of drugs missing. So he was left with no option but to phone dad. And dad turned up. Dad would never normally turn up to the stash. We had some tactics in place where that was all monitored and seen and observed and used in evidence.

[David Collins]

So that look, that pylon looks very like the pictures with the bank and the trees. And we've got some big stone blocks just beside us which are very like the stone blocks in the picture. So we could be looking at it. So I can see on this picture Alfred Deer, he's kind of using one of the stone blocks. He's resting on it with his. His head down. He's clearly very upset about something. And there's somebody else in the picture on the phone. And in that moment, the police say he's just realized that a very large quantity of his drugs have gone missing. When the dad turned up, what could you see?

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Frustration, anger, lots of arms been thrown around and what's happening? And then off they went.

[David Collins]

Satisfying moment.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

They'd already lost small pockets of drugs that we'd taken out from couriers. But this was obviously the main stash that we decided to remove.

[David Collins]

It was the evidence police needed. Thirteen suspected members of Alfred Deer's drug gang were arrested in two days. Eleven pled guilty. Alfred himself would be convicted. In October 2018, he was sentenced to more than 18 years in prison, but only in his absence because Alfred disappeared.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Well, we think he went to Sweden and various other traveling communities and networks that he knew. And he bounced around the country for

[David Collins]

a while, until in 2020, in Norfolk, he tried to give a false name during a routine police check. And Alfred Deer was finally arrested. Despite the delay in justice, it was still a satisfying moment for Adam.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

You invest a lot of your life in it as a detective. You live and breathe it for 18 months, two years, and then you hope you get your conviction. I'd be lying. It's not unusual to go for a pint after a trial, but then the day after you're back on the job.

[David Collins]

So what happened to the drugs trade after? Obviously, that's a big hit on the major player in York, isn't it? So what happened after that?

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Any organised crime group, particularly with drugs that we take out, there's a vacuum for a day or two and that is just an opening for another ocg.

[David Collins]

Just a day or two.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

Take over the market's still there. The drug users still need the fix for the day. So who's going to do that? So the chatter goes around and it's who's doing what.

[David Collins]

But this time the chatter was different. It wasn't just any supplier that had been shut down. It was the biggest player in town, a group who had defended their patch. With the Deer family behind bars, suddenly York was there for the taking, and a whole new business model was ready to take over County Line.

[Narrator/Host]

Let's be completely honest. Are you happy with your job? The fact is, a huge number of people can't say yes to that. Too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown or one we never really wanted in the first place. But we stick it out and we give reasons like what if the next move is worse? And I've put years into this place and maybe the most common one. Isn't everyone miserable at work? But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving. It's time to get unstuck. It's time for Strawberry Me. They match you with a certified career coach who helps you get from where you are to where you want to be, either at your existing job or by helping you find a new one. Your coach helps clarify your goals, creates a plan and keeps you accountable along the way. Go to Strawberry Me Career and get 50% off your first coaching session. That's Strawberry Me Career guys.

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[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Yeah, I have got sighted now he's

[David Collins]

on Kingsway seven Years after the Deer gang was jailed for controlling the crack cocaine and heroin trade in York. I'm out with the police as they try to disrupt the drug dealers who have tried to replace them. Towards the roundabout who sat on the bench.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

He definitely felt to those two.

[David Collins]

I didn't see it.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Right. Basically gone down the alleyway.

[David Collins]

A plain clothes officer on a bike radios in. He spotted a cyclist. He thinks he's dealing drugs.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Have you seen it? Yeah, we've seen him. He's got. We're gonna try and stop him, see what happens.

[David Collins]

We pull up officers almost out of the door when the man spots the police's unmarked cars and suddenly takes off.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

But he's gone a little lameway, just sits down anyways.

[David Collins]

The first advantage the suspected dealer has is that York is a warren of alleyways, cycle paths and parks, spaces cars can't access.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

His king's going north somewhere. That's the last.

[David Collins]

He's going down to Water Lane, mate.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Head down to Water Lane and then head up towards. You have to go in towards Tesco.

[David Collins]

Each one has multiple exits which the police don't have enough officers to cover.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

He just come off around about Water

[David Collins]

Lane, gone left and he's gone down alleyway.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Which alleyway? Where?

[David Collins]

Towards what he knows.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

He knows looking for him.

[David Collins]

He's on the phone somewhere. All of which allows a suspected dealer to disappear.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Excuse me, have you just seen the bloke on a bike go this way? No notice. Cheers.

[David Collins]

The second advantage the criminals have is that their business model operates differently to the Deer family's old fashioned operation. Because those leading these new drug syndicates aren't running their operations here in York. Instead they're sat at home, miles away in another city like Bradford or Leeds, calling the shots from the other end of a phone. Whilst the police chase their low level runners round the block. It means it's much harder to trace the activity back to them. And if one dealer on a bike is caught, they can simply send another tomorrow morning.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

I'm Sergeant Mike Brocken from the Op Sentry team, which is the Serious Organised Crime Disruption team for North York Yorkshire.

[David Collins]

Mike's team was set up to tackle this new threat. He can give us the county lines 101, help us understand how it all works. Because a county line isn't a line on a map or a route. Drugs are moved along. It's a phone line used to offer drugs for sale. So find yourself an old phone, maybe an old model you can pay for with cash. Give your new business a name, probably a Boy's name, The Bobby line, Teddy line, Sam line, AJ line, Max line, Diego line. These are all real lines which have recently run into York.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

One guy, I can tell you about that one because he's been convicted. It was the Leon line and his name was Leon and the line he was running was the Leon line. I mean, not the most intelligent of people, but yeah, I don't know why they choose the names they choose.

[David Collins]

Did he plead not guilty?

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

No, he went guilty. Surprisingly, he went guilty very quickly.

[David Collins]

I was gonna say it's quite a convincing bit of evidence for the jury, isn't it? Any potential jury. Next, you need customers and people to sell the drugs, and you're not gonna be doing that yourself.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Your line holder typically will never be in the area that they're operating in. They distance themselves from the commodity, they distance themselves from the users. So they will then place people who are gonna either deal to the customers in York, or they will place people that they trust as part of their organized crime group in an address in York and force or coerce, or you may have willing volunteers, any of those three, the people from York, to go out and deal for them. And the customer base gets added to simply by word of mouth. You might be a customer of the Max line. You might go, yeah, their stuff's really good. Speaking to one of my mates and, oh, yeah, well, you get me on their books, get me on their distribution list. So numbers will then get sent from users back to the line and they'll just get added in as customers. There's no checks and balances around who this number is by your lineholder. So we have had occasions previously where police officers work. Numbers have ended up receiving text messages.

[David Collins]

Once you've got your phone, the number of some users and some runners who will physically deal the drugs, you're ready to start your county line. Just send a text to advertise your goods.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

2 for 20, 3 for 50. Best banging shots, fat shots, best in town. Any of this lingo sent in bulk

[David Collins]

to dozens, even hundreds of users at one time. And when somebody places an order, you can arrange the delivery.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

You are now going to this location to see 20 Johnny, who's buying whatever from you.

[David Collins]

A lot of this is done on the phone, so the police can't be sure exactly what's said. But what they do see are the texts. These were sent last year by the SAM line.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Back on both 24. Seven fast drops on banging W. 2 for 15, half gram, 30.

[David Collins]

Obviously, I've never seen ever text messages from a dealer to his customer base before.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

It's so fascinating to see SOS on spot all day. First is happy hour, 3 for 20. Then back to usual deals.

[David Collins]

I mean, if you help me decode them. But one here it says on banging best of both, 2 for 15, 4 for 30. What does that mean?

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Okay, so on is a term used to basically let his customer base know that they are open for business. And your banging best of both refers to the commodity that they're offering. So when they say both, they're referring to heroin and crack cocaine, which are often sold by county lines in one deal and then the last bit at the end. Your 2 for 15, 4 for 30 is your pricing structure.

[David Collins]

In York, police say the standard cost of a 0.1 gram bag of heroin is about a tenner. He's quite entrepreneurial, isn't he? I mean, he's kind of offering lots of deals. You get two of either heroin or

[Detective Adam Heatley]

crack cocaine for 15 quid, you might

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

get one of each for 15 quid, or you might get two and two for £30. Or depending on your habit, you might split that three and one.

[David Collins]

What does this mean? 24, seven fast drops. Is that just indicating that you can deliver quickly?

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Basically they can deliver quickly and it may even mean that they're prepared to deliver to their home address. It is marketing ultimately. It's trying to get their customer base to buy from them as opposed to another county line that may well be operating at the same sort of time. So by using language to try and entice people, it's no different to your television adverts effectively that are out there

[David Collins]

and like any advertising, pretty effective. At the start of 2025, York had 20 different county lines running into the city. With so much competition out there, criminals have to find a way to stand out. So different lines take on different personalities. Take the Banksy line about with both

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

massive sizes, items to weight. Call me, I'll look after you. Banksy still about. Big or small, we got you, no messing, whatever you need. He seems to try and engage a little bit more with his customers. He seems to almost try to be a little bit amusing, a little bit light hearted. Wakey wakey, eggs and bacon, hands off

[Peter Roderick]

cocks, pull up your socks Rocks and

[David Collins]

boulders bigger than your shoulders Actively traptivated active Items to weight.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

3 for 25 massive bits. Come get your brekkie for me. It's not a light hearted subject when you're dealing class A drugs, but he kind of sees it very much as a I can put my little spin on it. But again, it's a brand that is his brand. That's his way of marketing and that's what makes him unique.

[David Collins]

That's his personality coming through where he's writing, wakey, wakey, eggs and bacon, hands off cocks, pull up your socks.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

That's kind of having met him, that is very much his personality. Yes.

[David Collins]

And then there's the Teddy line. It was one of the first to enter York when the Deers were arrested and it's stayed ever since, largely under the radar. Teddy's messages are more formal. Hi, it's me, the original Teddy.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

I'm back.

[David Collins]

New number, bigger sizes even. Polite.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

It's Teddy, I'm active all day with both.

[David Collins]

Bigger sizes. It's Teddy. Active all day with both. There's no deals mentioned there. Active all day, me, Teddy. Why is that so different from the Sam line?

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

I believe that that's because the line has been around in York and operating for so long. So when their customer base receives a message from the number they know to be the Teddy line, they already know what it means. They know what their pricing structure is, they know how much they're going to have to pay for a deal from the Teddy line. They trust in the product they're being provided, they know the quality of it. So the Teddy line don't need to advertise and push in the same way that a new line trying to establish self in the city would have to do. Teddy line is like almost like your Tesco, your Sainsbury's that have been around for years. Your Sam line is your new up and coming supermarket, discount supermarket that's trying to get a share of the market.

[David Collins]

In the world of county lines, though, getting a share of the market is about more than discounts or branding. Adam Heatley, who took down the Deer family's empire, thinks the rise in competition has also driven up violence.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

So there's a term called taxing, whereby they'll either rob each other's drugs or even take the line itself and steal it and then it's feudal after that. Very often we see machetes, weapons, axes, not so much guns, in fairness, it's more stabbing and hitting implements, shall we say. But they're not afraid to use them.

[David Collins]

Mike Brocken from the Serious Organised Disruption team.

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Again, they're all groups in West Yorkshire that know each other over in West Yorkshire as well. So there's already that rivalry a lot of them are running out of the urban street gangs over in west, which bring with that the added violence that they have so we have had the Bobby line and the Anton line, which are two warring lines, effectively both trying to get a foothold in the market. A young adult was attacked down by the river path, ended up in hospital with bleed on the brain and then when we had gone to speak to him, he'd fallen. He didn't want to tell us anymore, but the intelligence work behind the scenes were like, no, it was a drugs taxi and the Bobby line responsible, the same line about a month later were responsible for a machete attack on two kids that were staying in a guest house. And yeah, a group of three lads from the Bobby line have gone in and attacked him with machetes.

[Detective Adam Heatley]

We're talking about 15, 16, 17 year old vulnerable kids who were sent over and often get faced with this. It's very rarely the OCG heads who sit in a comfy chair in a house with the line dictating what happens.

[David Collins]

Children for a county line aren't just free labour, they're a disposable resource who can hold the drugs and take on the risk of arrest, of violence, of robbery, of holding a knife to enforce the territory or collect a debt. It's these young people who've borne the brunt of the wave of violence which has swept across York. So here police came up with a plan to take the fight directly to those sat in their armchairs coordinating everything. It's called Operation Titan and we'll be inside it tomorrow. On the story,

[Sergeant Mike Brocken]

Foreign.

[David Collins]

Times Northern editor David Collins. This episode was produced by Kate Lamble. The executive producer was Dan Box. Sound design was by Tom Burchell and theme composition was by Mal Lucetto. If you have any questions or comments, drop us a line to thestoryatthetimes.com or you can leave us a comment on Spotify. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

[Peter Roderick]

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