Undercover police officers are being deployed in night clubs to deal with drink spiking

A senior police officer has said plain clothes police could be used to detect spikings


Plain clothes police officers are being deployed to night clubs to deal with drink spiking, a leading police officer has said.

It’s one of a range of measures taken when police become aware of a potential perpetrator in a club, Avon and Somerset acting chief constable Sarah Crew told MPs yesterday.

“If we proactively think there are perpetrators, and we’ve had this recently, we will be targeting them,” Crew, who is also head of the National Police Chiefs Council, told the Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday. “There might be plainclothes police in those premises, looking for those perpetrators and that behaviour, to be able to apprehend them and to capture evidence.”

 

There have been calls for action and student boycotts of clubs after a number of reports of spiking, including a number of young women claiming to have been spiked by injection. Crew was questioned on what the police are doing to tackle the reports.

Along with incidents in Nottingham, where a man has been arrested, Devon and Cornwall Police are investigating after a woman reported being injected at Fever & Boutique in Exeter.

“In terms of more general spiking, we do know that’s a problem,” said Crew. She added that: “I think police forces are absolutely taking it seriously.”

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