Daily Mail - 17.08.2019

Page 6 QQQ Daily Mail, Saturday, August 17, 2019

In an extraordinary photo, dozens of
shocked customers are searched by

police after a raid on an Amsterdam-

style ‘cannabis cafe’ where drugs were

brazenly being sold for as little as £3.
More than 150 officers stormed the venue on
Thursday night and detained 52 people inside

• confiscating cannabis worth £20,000.
  Before the crackdown, the shop had been doing
  a roaring trade in marijuana products – including
  super-strength skunk, freshly-baked hash brown-
  ies and cannabis-infused energy drinks.
  Operating in a converted railway arch in Lime-
  house, east London, the cafe, called The Den,
  looked like a social club with leather sofas, a pool
  table and tropical fish inside two large tanks.
  Punters included businessmen relaxing at the
  end of a long day and students, police said.
  Drugs were openly sold from a menu taped to
  the bar and included varieties named ‘Lemon’,
  ‘Amnesia’ and ‘Biscoff ’.
  Hash brownies – which officers found still warm
  in the oven – were being sold for £3 while a 6.5g
  bag of hash cost £50, according to unapologetic
  menus found in the premises.
  Officers also found wads of cash and dozens of
  pre-bagged deals of cannabis inside the cafe,
  which has been operating for at least several
  months. The venue was surrounded by high-secu-
  rity, with CCTV cameras trained on the entrances,
  and a reinforced steel door which could be locked
  from the inside.
  Punters needed a membership card to join the

By Jemma Buckley
Crime Correspondent

cafe, which is advertised on social
media and through word of mouth.
They were frisked on entry.
A sign on the door read: ‘no food
from outside. Support our snack
and beverage bar. Strictly no per-
sons under the age of 20. You will
be refused entry. no hoodies. Smile
for our cameras! Please keep the
noise levels down while entering
and leaving The Den.’
Officers found a bag full of busi-
ness cards advertising the cafe,
which were written in English, Ara-
bic and Russian.
A specially-brewed cannabis

energy drink was found inside with

a label reading: ‘Jamie’s orgasmic

energy drink: East London’s best

kept secret’.

The raid on the cannabis cafe,

witnessed by the Daily Mail, is the

fourth of its kind in four weeks in

east London. Police have applied

to the courts for The Den to be

permanently shut down.

Of those detained, one man was

arrested for possession of a class-A

drug and a handful of others who

were caught in possession of can-

nabis were given police warnings.

The majority were released with

no further action, which the Met

called a ‘proportionate response’.

All those detained were searched

methodically in a tent erected on

wasteland behind the cafe.

Dozens of officers were involved

in detaining the customers, who

were mostly men aged between 18

and 30.

One of the other raids has seen a

man charged and charges are

pending for two others. Some 60

people have been arrested as a

result of the crackdown.

The busts have formed part of

Operation Continuum, a local

operation tackling organised drug

dealing and associated crime. The

initiative began 18 months ago and

has seen more than 350 arrests,

and over £350,000 seized in cash.

Detective Superintendent Mike

Hamer said: ‘There was a real cross

section of people coming to the

venue, including students and local

residents and even some business

people at the end of their working

day. The main aim was to close this

place down.

‘It is organised criminality, and I

think people are unaware of the

links with violence in the chain of

supply. This activity was in

response to local community

concerns.’

He wanted to ‘ensure that the

public feel they are being listened

to’, adding: ‘People involved in this

type of criminality should know

that we are on to them.

‘Whilst the causes of violent

crime are highly complex and

wide-ranging, drug dealing is inex-

tricably linked with a high propor-

tion of the violence we have seen

on our streets.’

Mr Hamer said that his officers

‘regularly see young people and

Freshly-baked hash brownies, drug-laced

energy drinks and brazen menus, but dozens

of students and professionals got a rude

awakening as 150 police staged huge...

Snookered: A customer dressed in a hoodie – which supposedly breaks the club’s dress code – is questioned

WILD WEST BRITAIN

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