CUSTOMS BOOST

ANOTHER 32 Customs officers are being taken on at Heathrow Airport in
the war against the crack-cocaine trade.

Drug investigators have been overwhelmed by a huge rise in "stuffers"
and "swallowers" - drug couriers who either swallow the cocaine or
hide it inside their bodies.

They caught 64 mules last year - that has shot up to 162 arrests this
year. Some stuffers had tried to smuggle in a kilo, pounds 100,000
worth, of cocaine.

Officers say all the couriers were working for Yardie or posse drug
barons who control the growing crack market in London, Birmingham,
Manchester and Liverpool.

Ninety per cent arrive from Jamaica. But officers believe that for
every one they catch, eight get through.

A senior Customs source said: "You can trace the link between the
increased flow of cocaine from the West Indies, feeding in to the
teenage posses who convert it into crack.

"That in turn leads to the sort of environment like the North Peckham
estate in which an innocent like Damilola ends up being murdered."

Couriers are X-rayed in hospital, then watched 24 hours a day by two
officers until they pass the drugs. A source said: "We have been
catching so many recently that hardly any officers have been left to
staff the frontline. We are facing a crisis."