SQUADS of "cuckoo" drug mules are leaving locals "too scared to speak" as a leafy town becomes the UK's new gang capital. Forty nine minutes is all it takes to send teenagers weighed down with drugs from London to Swindon - and destroy a once-proud town. That short rail journey from the capital is the reason why Swindon has seen an explosion in drugs and knife and gun crime in recent years.
Locals in the once-peaceful Wiltshire town are now too terrified to leave their homes at nights and many are making plans to move out. For it seems “county lines” gangs have taken over most of the drug dealing in the town and the ruthless leaders of the criminal enterprise will stop at nothing to protect their “business”. The tools of their trade are intimidation, muscle, knives and, increasingly, guns.
One local we spoke to, who asked not to be identified for fear of losing his life, told us: “Almost every drug deal done in this town now is off the back of county lines. “The way they work is they find young people living here - the more vulnerable or desperate, the better - and groom them, bribe them with money and free drugs, make them promises, threaten them, whatever they have to do to allow the drug runners to live in their homes and use them as a base. “Then, these so-called cuckoos completely take over their lives.
“They get free board and lodging and in many cases they force these young local people to go out onto the streets delivering or selling their drugs for th.
