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A London man whose arrest last year led police to launch a massive crackdown on gun crime and weapons smuggling faces new human trafficking charges.
A woman working in the sex trade made an agreement with a man related to payment and lodging in April 2019, but the man withheld money from her and assaulted her before she stopped working for him in September 2019, London police said Thursday.
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The man contacted the woman in June and demanded money from her, threatening her family if she didn’t pay him, police said. The 27-year-old woman contacted police and the human trafficking unit launched an investigation.
Defined as the exploitation of people through force, fraud or coercion, human trafficking is usually divided into two types: sex trafficking and labour trafficking.
Investigators charged Dylan Crawford, who was in custody on an unrelated matter, with trafficking a person by exercising control; obtaining financial or material benefit from a trafficked person; obtaining material benefit from sexual services provided; procuring or exercising control; uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm; and assault.
Crawford, 25, has been in custody since his arrest on Feb. 2, 2023, after officers spotted a man wanted on multiple outstanding warrants entering a business in northeast London. Police arrested the man and seized nine handguns, cocaine, prescription pills, cellphones and $2,555 cash, police said. One handgun was found on the suspect and the other eight in the vehicle he was driving.
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Crawford was charged with more than two dozen gun- and drug-related offences. Six months later, London police and other law-enforcement agencies held a news conference to announce the results of Project SAFE, a three-month investigation into firearms and weapons smuggling that led to charges against 70 people and the seizure of 26 guns and $8.5 million of drugs.
A senior police officer said the three-month investigation was launched after the arrest of Crawford, who was charged with additional offences for importing and conspiring to traffic guns.
But all of Crawford’s charges were stayed, meaning the case has been set aside and there’ll be no further court action to seek a verdict, on July 8, court records show.
Crawford remains in custody while facing other unrelated charges of dangerous driving, flight from police and driving while prohibited. The charges stem from allegations on Aug. 18, 2022, and the case returns to court on July 29, the records say.
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