While the operation resulted in a total of 43 arrests across Scotland, police were keen to highlight work done to help those they say were being exploited.<\/p>\n
Of the 38 vulnerable people “safeguarded” and referred to agencies, nine of them were children.<\/p>\n
Four people went on to be referred to the Home Office as potential victims of human trafficking and modern slavery.<\/p>\n
Lesley Gordon, of Action for Children, described the use of young people in crime as “child abuse”.<\/p>\n
She continued: “The impact of criminal exploitation, including ‘county lines’, on the lives of children and young people is utterly devastating.<\/p>\n
“We continue to see the serious harms inflicted by the exploiters on children, their families and their local communities.<\/p>\n
“Through our criminal exploitation intervention services across Scotland and the UK, we support children, young people and families affected by exploitation working closely in partnership with police and other agencies.”<\/p>\n
Assistant Ch Con Stuart Houston, head of organised crime and counter terrorism, said: “Organised criminals don’t care about the people they harm, they only care about power and money.<\/p>\n
“This is simply not welcome or tolerated in Scotland.”<\/p>\n
He added: “But we can’t do it alone. If something doesn’t look or feel right, trust your instincts and report it. <\/p>\n
“Even a small bit of information can make a significant difference and help protect our communities.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the operation resulted in a total of 43 arrests across Scotland, police were keen to highlight work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-473187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}