A police raid in
Rotherham turned up
a significant quantity
of cannabis and an
offensive weaponROTHERHAM
BramleyThurcroftBramptonRawmarshSwintonWath upon
DearneMaltbyDinningtonMMM*Multiple farms have been found in some streets 2 miles6,
Total number of plants61*
Total number of
cannabis farms
discovered and
dismantledCannabis farms found and shut down since October 2021“We’re working closely with South York-
shire police after power cuts in the local
area were caused by suspicious overload
activities.”
Chief Superintendent Steve Chapman,
the district police commander for Roth-
erham, decided that dedicated action
was needed “at the point that we sud-
denly saw that people were starting to
lose their electricity supplies and their
heating”.
He added: “We cannot afford to allow
organised crime to disrupt people’s livesin that way. So it was at that point that we
thought right, we’re going to make a
stance on this.”
Police have identified 17 organised
crime groups in Rotherham, three of
them predominantly linked to cannabis
distribution. While some criminals are
local, others come from outside, taking
advantage of cheap housing, empty
properties, and some unscrupulous land-
lords.
Sam Barstow, head of community
safety at Rotherham metropolitan bor-ough council, said the local authority was
looking at “how we can make it more dif-
ficult or less appealing for criminals to
undertake this kind of activity.”
Chapman said police were not inter-
ested in “somebody sat in the house
growing a couple of cannabis plants for
themselves and their own use”, but in
“organised criminals making millions of
pounds and exploiting vulnerable people
to be able to do it and impact significantly
on the local community”.
@HannahAlOthmancrime and are often exploiting vulnerable
people paid little or nothing to cultivate
the plants.
Operations are sophisticated. In some
cases, criminals dressed in workwear,
posing as power company staff, have dug
up the pavement and tapped in to the
mains supply.
In the Eastwood area, the problem has
been particularly bad. It is difficult to
walk more than a few hundred yards
down a terraced street without passing a
property sealed with metal shutters. In
many cases, these houses have been
boarded up after being raided by police.
“It was every day,” a woman living near
a boarded-up house said. “No cooking,
no cleaning, no radiators, because the
gas boiler uses electricity. You couldn’t
do anything, just wait for them until they
turn it back on. But I’m not going to
report it, because I’m not a snitch.”
Just before Christmas Mohammad
Mubashar, 30, had walked through the
door with his children when the power
went off “and they couldn’t tell us how
long it would be”, he said.
“And I’ve got to get them up with an
alarm, feed them, bath them ... so I had
to go to my sister.”
The power goes off regularly, Muba-
shar said. “My lights were like a Christ-
mas tree, going on and off.”
Another woman said: “It’s difficult
when your child doesn’t like the dark.”
A shop worker near by, who did not
want to give her name, said there could
be “four or five” power cuts a week. “We
had a lot of milk go off.” She described the
area as “not a place I’d want to be having
my grandchildren down to stay”.
The situation in Rotherham is not
unique. Electricity North West, which
supplies homes in other areas in the
north of England, has said that it has also
noted more power cuts linked to canna-
bis farms in recent months.
Rotherham’s community safety part-
nership, which includes the council and
police, is working with the electricity
board, and aims to make the town an
inhospitable place for cannabis produc-
tion. Northern Powergrid, which sup-
plies electricity to Rotherham, said:At about 9am last Wednesday a police van
pulled up outside a terraced house in the
Brinsworth area of Rotherham. As the
battering ram splintered the wooden
door, a woman opened the first floor bed-
room window: “What the f*** are you
doing?” she screamed. Once the police
were inside, another young woman in a
dressing gown flicked them her middle
finger.
The answer to what they were doing is
simple: executing a class B drugs war-
rant. The police had received intelligence
that those living at the property might
have been growing cannabis.
While the officers did not find plants,
they did discover — with the help of a
springer spaniel called Ruby — a signifi-
cant quantity of cannabis, weighing
scales and an offensive weapon.
Since October, police have shut 61 can-
nabis farms in Rotherham in Operation
Grow, a mission to tackle production of
the drug.
They have seized 6,797 plants with a
street value of £6.8 million and 25 people
have been arrested, of whom ten have
been charged. Two have been convicted
and two have been deported for immigra-
tion offences.
Cannabis farms have become so pro-
lific in Rotherham that in some areas they
are causing power cuts. Indoor cannabis
farms need artificial heat, light and
humidity to function, leading to gangs
stealing the energy needed to power
them.
Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for
Rotherham, said that they had become
“standard” and were “blowing power
supply, sometimes four times a day”,
which is having “massive knock-on
implications to both households, but also
local businesses”.
In many cases, Champion added, the
cannabis farms were run by organised
criminal gangs. She said: “There’s
modern slaves that are physically inside
the properties. And then rival gangs will
have turf wars.” Many are from Albania
and other countries in the Balkans.
The gangs have fuelled a rise in violentHannah Al-OthmanSUNDAY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP; STEVE METTAM/ROTHERHAM ADVERTISERBlackouts in Cannabis Town as
gangs siphon power to grow pot
12 The Sunday Times February 6, 2022NEWS
Lights are going out across Rotherham because of marijuana farmers digging up pavements to tap into the mains supply