Watch dramatic moment cops rugby tackle drug dealer

Astonishing video footage has emerged showing police rugby tackling a drug dealer selling heroin and crack cocaine for pocket money prices in Piccadilly Gardens.

Police have revealed that dealers specialising in class A drugs have begun operating by the statue of Queen Victoria, next to the children’s play area.

Over the last few years police have been trying to stamp out a trade in skunk cannabis centred around the ‘Berlin Wall’ area of the gardens.

But over the summer they discovered that a broad daylight trade in hard drugs - including the former legal high Spice - has opened up in the heart of the city centre.

Now, Ali Ahmed, 23, has been jailed for three years and nine months at Manchester Crown Court after being caught with over 100 wraps of heroin and crack cocaine in the Gardens.

Astonishing video images show the moment police arrested him, rugby tackling him to the ground after observing him touting for business in the afternoon. He had been peddling wraps of drugs for just £5 each in full view of passers by.

According to the Manchester Evening News, the police have received a number of complaints from concerned witnesses. In August, a mother reported seeing men buying drugs and then building a crack pipe in broad daylight by the children’s play area.

In the same period, staff in offices overlooking the Gardens complained it has become a magnet for dealers and addicts.

And charity workers have reported concerns that homeless young people hooked on Spice - a potent form of synthetic cannabis banned earlier this year - are falling victim to sexual exploitation in the area.At Ahmed’s Manchester Crown Court sentencing hearing, prosecutor Simon Barrett said there had been a recent ‘upsurge’ in the supply of class A drugs in the Gardens.

“Whereas cannabis was centred around Berlin Wall, the class A seems to be coming from the Victoria statue. The concern is that it’s not only in Piccadilly Gardens, but next to a children’s play area”, he added.

Ali Ahmed, who has now been given a criminal behaviour order banning him from Piccadilly Gardens, was observed at 4.30pm on August 1 counting snapbags he was seen taking from a ‘manbag’. At 6.30pm he was seen talking to customers - including a man who disappeared behind a dumpster on Back Piccadilly with a ‘scruffy looking male’ who paid him in coins.

Ali ran as officers approached on his return to the Gardens, but was tackled to the ground and arrested with 61 wraps of crack and 41 of heroin. At the time, he was on licence for robbery.

His is sentencing hearing was told that in January he was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Daniel Smith, a homeless man who was beaten to death and set on fire by Spice users at the arches of Salford Central station.

This led to Ahmed, until then a petty thief and mugger, being ‘shunned’ by his family and becoming homeless Ahmed was never charged with murder and went on to be a key prosecution witness in the case. But while living rough he became addicted to class A drugs through people he met in Piccadilly Gardens, John Kennerley, defending, said

Ahmed, of no fixed address but from the Rusholme area, was caught dealing drugs within days of giving evidence in the murder trial.

Sending him down after he admitting possessing class A drugs with intent to supply, Judge Richard Mansell QC said he had sentenced numerous men for dealing cannabis in the area, and was taking higher ‘starting points’ for jail-time because of the ‘adverse impact’ on the community.

Words, video and images: Manchester Evening News.