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Video: Gun cops swoop on drug suspects
ARMED officers arrested seven suspected drug dealers in a major police operation at a Peterborough hotel on Thursday.
ARMED officers arrested seven suspected drug dealers in a major police operation at a Peterborough hotel on Thursday.Shocked onlookers watched as 25 officers, some of them armed, descended on the Restover Lodge, in Newton Way, off Boongate, at 10am and arrested two people.
Officers wielding automatic weapons then arrested five more as they attempted to leave the area in a taxi and a Renault Clio, with gun sights trained on the suspects as they slowly got out of their vehicles, before they were wrestled to the ground and handcuffed.
Police had been staking out the hotel since at least 7am, having received a tip-off in the early hours of the morning.
Michael Cosgrove, who works at British Car Auctions, in Boongate, said: "I went around the side of the hotel to have a look because I heard the officers shouting 'Go, go, go!", and they surrounded a car.
"The man inside didn't look like he wanted to get out and one of the officers shouted: 'Get out, or we will shoot'.
"About five police vehicles were parked in our car park before I arrived at work at 7.20am and eventually a big van came along with about two dozen officers coming out of it."
A 34-year-old Peterborough woman was among those arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to supply class A drugs, as were four men aged 25, 22, 21 and 20 and a 16-year-old boy, all from London, and a 23-year-old man of no fixed address.
They were taken to Thorpe Wood Police Station, in Peterborough, for questioning.
Related:
Armed police raid in the Boongate, Peterborough: breaking story and more video.
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Shortly after the arrests, plain-clothed police officers searched the Renault and removed items, which were put in evidence bags. Police later confirmed that class A drugs were seized at the scene.
The taxi driver looked extremely flustered as he spoke to police, but he was later allowed to leave.
Numerous marked and unmarked police cars and vans were involved, with a police helicopter also monitoring the situation from the skies.
Witnesses James Hayden and Ben Turner, of Seafold Engineering in Whittlesey, were attempting to visit a DIY store when they saw the operation unfold.
James said: "We saw one of the men struggling as he was handcuffed. He was trying to get out of them. We first thought it was some people trying to get off paying a taxi fare, but then we saw the armed police!"
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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