Drugs-hit Sandwell estate gets half of all police raids
Around half of all police raids on homes in Sandwell in the past year have been carried out in the Princes End area of Tipton, the Express & Star can reveal.
Records show officers swooped on homes and businesses in Princes End 46 times in the past 12 months out of approximately 90 raids in total across the whole of the borough.
The majority of the raids were for drugs warrants, while others included theft warrants and those in partnership with trading standards.
Tipton neighbourhood Sgt Steph Court said it was hard to pinpoint why there was a high volume of raids in the area, but her team receives a lot of intelligence about potential offenders.
She said: "We do have a higher proportion of offenders for some reason, and we carry out intelligence-based action.
"I get probably two pieces of intelligence every single day, which may or may not lead to warrants.
"I don't know about information being given to teams in other areas like West Bromwich, or whether they are getting warrants turned down at court, but we have never had a warrant refused because we've always had sufficient evidence."
Sgt Court said the team was also doing all it could in the fight against drugs on Tipton streets.
She added: "In one instance we did three raids, confiscating £15,000 of cannabis from a property, and intelligence came through afterwards that there was no cannabis to be bought in Princes End that particular weekend.
"If we get the right information through we do get warrants straight away, because we do want to get the drugs off the streets."
Dealer Craig Longmore was jailed for three years after officers raided his High Street flat in October last year and seized heroin and cocaine.
Tipton is one of two priority areas for policing in Sandwell, along with the Soho and Victoria area in Smethwick. Princes End ward councillor Stephen Jones believes this may also be a reason for the high number of warrants in the area.
He said: "We do have high levels of policing now. The vast majority of people living in the area are good, law-abiding citizens, but you do have a contrast of people, with those who just don't want to know and deal drugs.
"We've been working on cleaning it up and making it a more desirable place to live for the past 18 months, and we've tried to support the police with CCTV cameras to gather evidence."
