TOUGHER sentences are being given to gangs to keep them off the streets, but police bosses admitted the issue of drugs will never be fully solved.

Essex Police is targetting dealers at the top of the chain to clamp down on county lines gangs, an approach which has seen 141 drug lines seized in the last year.

Det Chief Insp Lewis Basford has been leading the Serious Violence Unit for this period, with his teams making 344 arrests and securing 212 charges.

The result has meant 34 less county lines operations – where drugs are shipped between Essex and London – are now in play.

He said:“What we are doing is working ‘top-down’ instead of ‘bottom up’. We are going after the people who are holding the lines – that’s where we see the biggest harm. But it does take patience; we have to bide our time a little bit.

“Only by doing that can we dismantle the lines and take drugs off the streets of Essex.”

The officer revealed courts are now dishing out harsher sentences of more than three years for offences, when they may have been 15 to 18 months in the past.

Busted - Arresting members of the County Lines gangs

Busted - Arresting members of the County Lines gangs

He added: “Are drugs always going to be sold in Essex? The reality is, yes. We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.

“It requires so much more than that and, for us, that means case building.

“You could arrest people, bail them or release them under investigation and then begin case building but we prefer to case build before making those key arrests.”

The officer admitted that in Southend, gangs are using a “model of drug dealing” which relies on young people who know the area dealing after drugs have been shipped in from elsewhere.

Tony Cox, Tory leader of the opposition in Southend Council, said: “The police have done a sterling job in terms of trying to thwart the county lines drug gangs.

“It’s sickening how they are preying on the young and vulnerable people.

“Clearly, it’s the only way to tackle it. You have got to get the head of the snake.”

One County Lines operation was exposed in March last year when Tyrell Thompson, the second in command of the “Max” drug line, stabbed Lee Chapman to death in Cromer Road.

Thompson, 24, of Kingston Road, London, was responsible for keeping drug runners in check. Thompson was jailed for life in December,