Tonight:
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Police free London child slaves
Justin Davenport, Crime Correspondent24 Jan 2008
Police today freed "slave" children who are smuggled into Britain by traffickers and are forced to steal and beg on the streets of London.
Hundreds of police launched simultaneous pre-dawn raids on a string of houses, each of which held up to 10 children, to seize the traffickers whose trade is worth £1billion per year
More than 20 people were arrested as officers freed the children, who had been sold to Romanian peoplesmuggling gangs and forced into a life of crime.
In one of the raids, police freed six children held in two adjoining threebedroomhouses.
Three forces co-operating with detectives from Romania were involved in the massive raids on these Fagin-style gangs.
Officers wearing protective uniform and supported by police dogs raided the homes located in a series of streets in a run-down area of Slough.
At one terraced house in Slough, riot squad officers used a sledgehammer to burst through the door.
Shouting: "Police, Police, Police!" they raced into the house and arrested at least one suspect.
Similar raids were being carried out in similar houses in several streets throughout Slough. Officers found a number of children, large sums of money and credit cards.
Today's was the first in a series of operations which have been launched against gangs which traffic children and commit crimes worth £1 billion a year. This is the first time police have revealed the full extent of a Romanian crime wave sweeping Britain.
Since the country joined the EU in January last year, the amount of Romanian crime in Britain has rocketed by more than 700 per cent and gangs have been behind at least three murders in London.
Police estimate that each child is worth £100,000 a year to the gangs and the Romanian authorities estimate there are up to 2,000 children who have been smuggled into Britain. The gang bosses channel millions of pounds back to Romania where the money is used to build luxury houses and buy expensive cars. One police source said: "They are driving BMWs and Mercedes and carrying weapons. These are highly organised criminals".
Four Romanian police officers were involved in today's operation, coordinated by detectives from Westminster's crime department.
The priority for the operation, codenamed Caddy, was to identify and rescue children at the addresses.
Social services teams were standing by to work with police to place the children-in care. Commander Steve Allen said: "This operation began about four years ago when we identified an increase in the number of pickpocketing offences on the streets of Westminster.
"Today we have very clear intelligence that we are confronting organised crime networks that traffic and exploit children in order to commit a wide range of crimes and then channel the proceeds of these crimes out of the UK.
"Today's operation is about dismantling these crime networks to protect and rescue these children." MrAllen, head of policing in Westminster, said Romanian criminality extended across Europe.
Figures from the Met showed that before Romania joined the EU, its nationals were associated with 146 crimes over six months in Britain. A year after it had joined, the figure leapt to 922 within the same period. Police believe around 70 people are behind the majority of the trafficking.
Officers on today's raids were warned that suspects could be armed with knives or lumps of wood, which they carry primarily to protect themselves from rival gangs.
