Police say they will ‘relentlessly pursue’ organised crime groups who are trying to exploit the Island.
But they’ve warned that the Isle of Man’s borders are ‘porous’ and say it’s still too easy for people to traffic drugs here.
This month 11 people were jailed for their involvement in supplying cocaine, brought in by others, to undercover police officers.
News Editor Tessa Hawley has this Newscast episode on 'Operation Nightjar':
Hello, it's Tessa, one of the news editors here at Manx Radio, back with you for another episode of Newscast. Today we're talking about a substance you may know as sniff, coke, blow, charlie, or perhaps more traditionally cocaine. Police on the Isle of Man say they're concerned about the blase attitude that some people have in relation to the Class A drug, particularly in relation to dealing it. It follows the culmination of a police initiative run between the Isle of Man Constabulary and the Northwest Regional Organised Crime Unit. Operation Nightjar ran through the latter part of 2023 and focused on the supply of Class A drugs in the nighttime economy. It saw undercover officers drafted in from the United Kingdom, target defendants, predominantly in or around licensed premises between July and November last year, posing as people who wanted to buy cocaine or sniff, the covert officers sought out people who would supply them with it, in many cases using social media, including Snapchat and WhatsApp. In some cases, they repeatedly approached defendants, a tactical move, to try and target them on three occasions. Now, as a result of Operation Nightjar and the covert evidence gathered from it, 18 defendants, 16 men and two women were charged with offences under the misuse of drugs act and at Douglas Court House this month, 16 of them were sentenced after pleading guilty. It's believed to be the largest mass sentencing exercise carried out at the Isle of Man courts of Justice. Deem's der Graham Cook told the court the operation and subsequent sentences that he imposed should be a deterrent to future street dealers. He jailed 11 of the defendants and handed suspended sentences to another five, but will it make any difference? Detective Chief Inspector Michelle McKillop led the investigation. Cocaine is actually probably as prevalent as cannabis, I would say. Cocaine is the go-to social drug. There are people from all walks of life that will use cocaine. And many of the defendants in this case definitely didn't look like your stereotypical drug dealer, no drug user. And actually, for many of them, they had good jobs, they had stable home lives, you know, they were good productive members of society, by the fact that they were involved in the supply of classic drugs. Yeah, and this really surprised me. I expected a number of individuals that I know of, you know, within the drugs fraternity to be the ones out on the streets dealing, and I was quite surprised of the names that were coming in. The individuals, and let you say, you know, people had families, they've got jobs and for intensive purposes, they contribute to society, but they're dealing classic controlled drugs, which is really dangerous to our society on the whole. And it's not just about, you know, if the one's night out, they have a great night go home, go back to work on the Monday. The effects that cocaine has on individuals when you take it physically. Not only that, but then people will steal to it for it. People will prefer to spend their money on that than other things. There'll be serious assaults, as I said before, the assaults and the prevalence of serious assaults with weapons and drug enforcement has increased on the island. So, you know, people are getting physically injured over this, and there's not many people on the Isle of Man who are making massive, massive amounts of money from this. The people that are making a lot of money are in the UK or are further revealed. The people here that we would call the the bigger fish, if you like, on the island, we're targeting them as well, with everything that we can in our in and all the powers we've got to do that. It is so easy to bring drugs into the Isle of Man at the moment. Certainly, the chief constables focus is to try and make this island hostile environment to deal drugs. The covert work that went into this saw undercover officers working in bars and actually approaching people and asking if they could get cocaine. What seemed to come across through this sentence in process was how easily people would say, "Yeah, I can get you some." If it was the undercover officers actively asking for it, does that open up the question of coercion? Yeah, absolutely it does, and the officers are trained very highly in that because obviously we can't entrap people. Had that been the case in any of these cases, we would have been under scrutiny and obviously that some questions would have been asked of our officers and certainly of me in court with regards to how we do that, but the officers are highly, highly trained in avoiding that situation. We wouldn't entrap people. People are willingly offering to deal the drugs. We've had, I think, over 30 years of jail time handed out across 11 individuals. There are a few people who've got pretty serious suspended sentences hanging over their head. Now, the deams to said this has to act as a deterrent. Do you think that it will do that? I think for a short while it will act as a deterrent. Certainly, we wouldn't be running another operation like this tomorrow because I think people will think about what they're doing and try and do it a little bit more cute. I think people will just change the way that they do it until they get confident again. As I say, it was about a decade ago when we did an undercover operation on the island. It's not something you can do every day or every week. I don't think it will stop people and say people want to use cocaine and the prevalence of it is quite apparent and the society's approach to it is apparent to me. And also, as I said before, you can get it. The people are getting drugs onto the island very, very easily. It's coming in on the planes. It's coming in on the boat. It's coming in on or in people. It's coming in the fishing boats bringing it in. We've also got parcels coming in. So any which way you could get something into the Isle of Man, our borders are porous at the moment and we really need to address that because if we don't address that, we're not going to be able to stop this. We're not going to be able to reduce it. It's too easy. What I will say, however, is people that do bring drugs to the Isle of Man, you have to be lucky every time they do it. We only have to be lucky once and I think the sentencing on the Isle of Man compared to the UK when you are caught committing these crimes should provide us as a deterrent. As you've heard, in court, the defendants' advocates highlighted how their clients, if not for their involvement in the supply of Class A drugs, were otherwise in the main productive members of society. Some highlighted how Operation Nightjar and the experience of the criminal justice system had acted as a wake-up call for their clients, leading them to seek help. Many we learnt had approached addiction, charity, motivate for that assistance and support. To find out more about the work Motivate does, my colleague Shavon Fletcher went down to the office in Douglas to speak to Chief Executive Tia Ozanturk and training support worker Jason McKee. We could argue that it has become normalised in popular culture. It's a party drug. A lot of people now will use it. There's a lot of local anecdotal evidence as well that it is a popular drug of choice. Unfortunately, there is a market for it and people don't start out with it being a problem. It starts out with people wanting to use it recreationally and have some fun, but it can become a problem. I do the drug arrest referral scheme and I do find people coming in and it just seems a normal thing. It goes hand in hand with a night out and people have a drink, judgments impaired and sounds a good idea to buy some cocaine and have some and it might just be a one-off for them. But with the drug arrest referral scheme, people can have a bit of education and they don't have to go through the judicial system for a one-off mistake. So that's something we offer here and I think it's really great that we do. Do you think that like society's view of cocaine has changed over the years of your experience here? I think it was seen as a drug that only rich people could afford in days gone by. It had names like Champagne Charlie, they used to call it but now it's Coke, it's below, it's got a range of names so yeah it has become normalised, there's no doubt about it as has cannabis and other drugs you know of choice now of today with young people. It's been noted in court you know we're talking a little bit about Operation Nightjart that the people caught up in that weren't your quote typical drug dealers. Instead in many cases they were just using cocaine recreationally and almost were doing a good turn to undercover police you know they were asking for a number and they've helped them out kind of thing. Is that indicative of how cocaine is now viewed in society? I think so yeah I mean yes because it's become more normalised then it's more acceptable you know in the illicit drug trade if you like but quite often the people that get found out are the ones that may be selling drugs you know to people on the street are at the end of it if you're like they're at the moment more exposed and you know the Isle of Man has its own version of county lines where you may start off using drugs which then becomes a problem and then you have to fund that. If anyone's listening in and you know maybe this is a little bit of a wake-up call you know how can they contact you and what's that first step in terms of reaching out. Okay so I'm going to stress yet again that we are free and we're confidential so we even have a free phone number that you can call which is 08081624627 you can email us at contact@motivate.im you can find us on social media and you can message us on there as well we are open Monday to Friday we have some evening clinics as well so get in touch we're here to help we don't judge we don't label and we are absolutely confidential. If you're interested in finding out more about operation night job and the sentences handed down you can find that information at monksradio.com and if you're listening to this newscast and are worried in any way about your own drug use or that of a family member or friend you can contact motivate a reminder that the charities number is 627656 you can also email them at contact@motivate.com. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manks Radio newscast you are obviously someone with exquisite taste may I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manks Radio podcasts at your favorite podcast provider so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone thank you You
