WITH Norwich under siege from machete-wielding drug gangs, police launched a special operation to break a heroin and crack dealing 'county line'.
Now a gripping new documentary reveals how detectives caught members of the “Lewis line” which was supplying the deadly drugs across Norfolk’s main city day and night.
In just seven months they shifted 4.3kg of Class A drugs, with an estimated street value of around £300,000.
The Channel 5 special, on tonight, goes behind the scenes with officers trying to discover the identity of the criminals at the heart of the drugs ring.
During Operation Hobble they gave chase to three suspected dealers who jumped out of a flat after the police knocked down the door.
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In the flat of the probable ringleader, Liam Bolt, they found an 18-inch machete, while dealers threw £10 and £20 notes from the window of another tower block in a failed bid to cover their tracks.
At the end of the operation in November, 11 suspects were given prison sentences for their part in the drugs operation.
Bolt, aged just 19 at the time of his arrest, was jailed for five years and seven months - the longest sentence handed down to any of the gang.
His apparent right-hand man Jamie Proctor, 20, displayed his arrogance and disrespect for the law while being questioned by officers.
He snarled “scally b****” and “s*** your mum” to the detectives in the interview suite.
Detective Constable Tim Lamb says: “There’s been some shocking fights and attacks, it’s terrifying communities. There's been slashings, stabbing, maiming each other."
The scale of the problem faced by Norwich was laid bare in January 2022 when 18-year-old dealer Joe Dix died after being stabbed seven times by a drugs gang.
Last year the number of crimes involving violence with injury, robbery, weapons possession and knife crime went up in Norfolk.
The latest figures reveal a shocking 23.3 per cent rise in knife crime and an 18.6 per cent rise in weapons offences.
In the documentary there is CCTV footage of a man armed with a huge knife rampaging through a pub.
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He was fended off by four men, defending themselves with pool cues, a chair and a beer bottle.
There’s been some shocking fights and attacks, it’s terrifying communities. There's been slashings, stabbing, maiming each other
Detective Constable Tim Lamb
Other clips reveal a masked man with a machete running down a Norwich city centre street in broad daylight, one with a zombie knife stalking a car park, and a massive fight in a petrol station forecourt.
Norfolk police have shut down 74 lines bringing Class A drugs into the county between April 2019 and April 2023.
The first episode of Channel 5’s Police: Suspect No 1 focuses on Operation Hobble’s battle to identify who was in charge of a phone being used to sell drugs all over Norwich.
Between December 2021 and June 2022, over 67,000 calls and 12,000 text messages were linked to the Lewis line.
Customers were told it was "actv all day/night best of both".
Cash 'thrown from window'
It was traced to Burleigh Tower on Munnings Road in the city, and an armed raid was carried out.
Officers uncovered a combat knife, kitchen knife, drugs and large amounts of cash which had been thrown out of the window.
Another door was pummelled in a flat in Norwich, with the loud bang giving the three occupants enough time to jump out of the window, overcoming the police officer blocking their exit.
The trio, though, were all captured in a dramatic foot chase through neighbouring streets.
But officers still needed to find the leader of the operation.
It required painstaking detective work, going to places where the phone had been topped up and checking the CCTV.
The man spotted on one of the cameras was Bolt - who was already on the police database.
Cocaine, scales, a safe, burner phones and a machete were found in his tower block flat.
That, though, did not end matters.
What the TV program does not reveal is that after Operation Hobble caught Bolt and Proctor, the Lewis Line was taken over by two more men - 22-year-old Tyler Murphy, from Norwich, and 23-year-old Edward Quigley, from nearby Wymondham.
They were also caught by officers and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class A drugs.
Detective Inspector Craig Bidwell, who oversaw the investigation, said: “This was a complex and lengthy investigation into a significant group of individuals responsible for distributing Class A drugs across Norwich.
“Class A drug dealing fuels serious criminality, destroys the lives of all involved and has a significant impact on our communities.”
Teen stabbed
The damage county lines gangs are doing to families is demonstrated by the tragedy of Joe Dix, whose parents told how the teen had been lured into drug dealing after being persuaded to carry some money from a park.
Joe was then mugged and the gang told him he owed them, so he had to start dealing.
Mum Emma Dix said: “They would take the money off him, take the drugs from him and it would be set up from whoever had given him the drugs... so he was in debt and had to work harder to pay the debt off. It was just a vicious cycle."
In January 2022, Joe went to aid an associate at a crack den in the Mile Cross area of the city.
There he was chased down by Benjamin Gil, 19, Cameron Palmer, 19, and Hans Beeharry, 20, and stabbed to death.
The three murderers were given life sentences last October.
Police: Suspect No 1 is on Channel 5 at 9pm tonight.
