Organised crime gangs are headhunting highly skilled drone pilots to make Amazon Prime-style deliveries of drugs, weapons, and even condiments such as tomato ketchup directly to prison cell windows, police have said. The specialist aircraft operators are being recruited to fly lucrative missions, sometimes transporting several kilograms of contraband at a time.
Detective Superintendent Andy Buckthorpe, of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), described it as a “constant battle” for authorities to keep up with the smuggling methods deployed by criminal gangs and their associates behind bars. “Drone technology is getting bigger and better so the payloads are getting bigger. Drones now are able to fly straight to the window of the cell,” he said.
GMP on Wednesday stepped up a region-wide crackdown on organised crime groups seeking to smuggle drugs, phones, and weapons into prisons, saying they were behind an increase in violence among inmates. Speaking outside HMP Forest Bank, a category B men's private prison in Salford, Buckthorpe noted a “real increase” in the use of bigger and better drones by gangs who were recruiting pilots from the non-criminal world.
Detective Chief Inspector Chris McClellan, of the north-west regional organised crime unit, explained: “What you’re seeing is organised crime groups who will identify people who have the skill sets to fly a drone and pay them an amount to do that. Some of the people we’ve arrested for flying the drones aren’t necessarily all criminals – they’ve just been hired to do that because they know how to operate drones.” McClellan said police recently recovered a drone carrying a 7kg payload containing mobile phones, drugs, and tobacco.
Drugs typically fetch between three and five times their street value in prison, making smuggling highly lucrative. One officer noted that a £50 bag of cannabis would sell for “hundreds of pounds” in prison, adding: “People get slashed all the time for it.” Other payloads have included more innocuous items such as tomato ketchup and other condiments.
At a police briefing on Wednesday, officers were told that HMP Forest Bank had had a “significant number” of smuggling offences in the past year, fuelling attacks on staff. In the five months to September, police recorded more than 350 crimes at the prison, including violence and public order offences. While drones are the favoured method, officers said friends, relatives, and even children have been known to hand over contraband on social visits, with up to 600 visitors a day at HMP Forest Bank alone.
