“Corner shop gangs” have been targeting council workers with a campaign of death threats and sex abuse, a new survey has revealed.
Trading standards officers across the UK are facing violence, threats and intimidation from organised crime gangs operating through High Street mini-marts and vape shops.
Physical assaults, sexual harassment, vehicle attacks and stalking have been reported by frontline teams in a survey conducted by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI).
The survey found 96 per cent of trading standards teams now encounter organised crime during their visits, with more than 70 per cent facing threats of intimidation or violence.
The CTSI says organised crime now represents the “number one threat” facing the profession.
One officer, named only as Mandy, received a midnight death threat from a Kurdish crime gang she was investigating for selling illegal cigarettes and nitrous oxide across a network of more than 50 shops, the BBC reports.
Her car was rammed twice outside her home, causing over £10,000 in damage on the first occasion.
After two years of intimidation, including men sitting outside her house and defendants tracking her movements while on bail, she and her husband sold their home and moved, using three removal companies to conceal their new address from the gang.
The CTSI have for the first time mapped gang activity across the High Street, discovering they have infiltrated not only the UK’s major cities, but smaller towns including Great Yarmouth and Barry in Wales, as well as in villages.
MORE TO FOLLOW…
In some areas, up to half of all mini-marts and vape shops and a third of American candy stores, are believed to have links to criminal networks
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