MELKSHAM Neighbourhood Police Team (NPT) carried out a positive warrant at a residential address in Bowerhill, where drugs were seized on Friday 26th April.
We attended the address in the morning and forced entry to the address. This is done to prevent the loss of any potential evidence. Once inside, the occupants are contained and the property is searched for anything deemed to be evidence of an offence.
Warrants are a great tool for enabling us to chip away at drug lines. Often, those in the chain are also involved in other criminal activities such as fraud. Signs of drug dealing at an address include frequent visitors, visitors making short trips to an address, people hanging around outside an address and interacting with passing vehicles. If you see it, report it.
You can do this in a number of ways: Crimestoppers, 101 or on our Wiltshire Police online reporting page. We often have comments said to us that drugs don’t harm society; that it is ‘just a bit of green’ or something that ‘picks me up’.
The truth is that drugs do cause harm to society. I have personally attended serious road traffic accidents caused by the drugs in somebody’s system; domestic incidents where a partner has been stabbed by their other half high on cocaine; and countless public order offences caused by people high on drugs that give them a tremendous amount of strength and rage that their body can’t cope with. I have attended accidental deaths from drug overdoses and arrested people who are paranoid from cannabis abuse.
Drugs do cause harm. They cause families to fall apart, bodies to break down and mental health to increase. They drive people to break into your house so that they can fuel the next fix. They cause people to live in their own filth. If you suspect a person is suffering from drug misuse, email the team at TrowbridgeAreaNPT@wiltshire.police.uk; speak to your GP if you sense you are struggling with addiction. Go online and seek help before another person is killed on the roads by a drug driver, or your house is broken into, your business stolen from, or a friend or family member is assaulted by somebody who couldn’t say no to yet another fix. Drugs are in every town and in every city.
Melksham is not the worst by a long shot but let’s keep up the pressure on our drug dealers to make them feel they can’t operate in our area.
Sergeant Gemma Rutter
