IT'S A RAID

Whitley Now Targeted in Crackdown on Drugs

VICKY watched as police streamed into two blocks of flats in
Windermere Road last night to shut down a drugs den then she summed up
the mood of law-abiding neighbours.

"It's got so bad around here we feel like we are the odd ones out
now."

Vicky, 41, has lived in the Whitley street for 17 years and described
it as a once nice area that has degenerated as drug dealers set
themselves up in the cul-de-sac's two three-storey flat blocks.
Dealers have been sitting openly selling crack cocaine in public,
there are streams of visitors at all times of the day and night and
lots of screeching tyres and quarrels.

"We have been really cheesed off," Vicky continued. "It's been going
about three years but really in the last year it's got so open."

Last night 45 police officers, ferried to the road in two furniture
vans, raided six flats in the two blocks. The biggest find was a
handgun with a live round of ammunition in the chamber in an empty
flat. A small amount of what was believed to be crack cocaine and
cannabis was also found elsewhere.

Two men and a woman were arrested.

Vicky continued: "It's like a market. They do it openly.

"I was walking past and one guy was sat in the communal doorway
selling. I was gobsmacked. "It's just sad that children have got to
see all this."

The raids were part of Operation Eightfold, Reading police's fight
against crack cocaine, and Inspector Ray Farrow said officers were
battling to stop a repetition of West Reading's crack problems in Whitley.

"It is a fresh market down in Whitley," he said. "It is
buoyant."

He added: "We are trying to clamp down on it before it gets a hold as
it did in West Reading.

"We have been receiving intelligence that there has been major grief
and anti-social behaviour linked to the drugs in Windermere Road.
"There are yobs hanging around on the periphery of it. It's been
blase. They have just got away with it for so long and they think they
are clever where they keep their drugs."

Officers smashed down the doors to flats just after 6pm and searched
all six properties as some residents looked on and cheered.

However others continued to give officers foul-mouthed abuse until
they left almost two hours later.

At one flat a CCTV camera monitored who came to the
door.

As the police helicopter buzzed above the street and the searches
continued, one officer told the Evening Post: "It's been good. No-one
hurt and this will send them a very big message."

Insp Farrow, in charge of Reading police's South East sector, added:
"I have never been cheered on a raid before.

"We want to send a clear message to people involved in drugs and
drug-related crime that their behaviour will not be tolerated.

"It's frustrating for us because we do fear people will return to the
flats and continue offending but we want them to know that we will
continue arriving, knocking down their doors and seizing drugs until
they get the message."