Help make Ipswich safer from illegal drugs

The illegal drugs trade has huge negative community consequences, including:

• Fear of reprisals from residents witnessing drug dealing or related crimes.
• Drug sellers' activities causing concern among community residents, for instance an increase in anti-social behaviour.
• Threats and use of violence towards those involved, and sometimes their friends and family.
• Vulnerable community members being forced, coerced, intimidated and/or exploited into criminal activities.
• Social exclusion of victims or concerned residents.
• Demand on social care provision for those who are affected by drug use/users.
• Increase in hospital admissions attributed to drug overdoses, poisonings, and drug-related neonatal disorders. 

Some of the signs that drug dealing might be taking place in your community can include:

• A change in someone's mood/demeanour (e.g. secretive/withdrawn/ aggressive/emotional).
• A resident or local person suddenly having unexplained, sometimes unaffordable, new clothes, jewellery, phones, cars etc.
• An increase in visitors and cars, scooters or bikes to a house or flat, or new faces appearing.
• Sometimes criminals take over a home or short-term let as a drugs base - this is known as cuckooing.
• New and regularly changing residents, maybe with non-local accents.
• Curtains often closed all the time and an increase in rubbish/drug paraphernalia.
• Residents or young people going missing, maybe for long periods of time.
• Young people seeming unfamiliar or uncomfortable with your community or where they are.

The National Crime Agency advice is that you trust your instincts. Even if someone isn't involved in drug dealing, they might be being exploited in some other way, so it's always worth speaking out.

Don’t base your suspicion of someone being a drug dealer solely on their age, gender, or ethnicity. Anyone can get recruited and caught up in this activity. Some signs of drug dealing could include (but are not limited to):

• Dealing drugs (you witnessing the exchange of money for drugs).
• Unknown or suspicious looking character/s.
• Gang associations.
• Controlling characteristics.
• Using nicknames when speaking about others.
• Access to numerous phones - receiving excess amount of phone calls or texts.
• Debt support promises (as part of their recruitment).
• Regularly visiting a potential cuckooed property (e.g. to drop off drugs, collect money or checking in on drugs/criminal activity taking place inside).