In the early hours of Saturday morning, London gay nightclub ‘Fire' was raided and closed down by ‘hundreds' of police enforcing an anti-drug policy, witnesses say. Nine people were arrested in the raid that followed a three month long intelligence led operation into Class A drugs – codenamed ‘Pivot'. Chief Inspector Clive Wakeley, who is responsible for the operation, said: "This type of operation shows our commitment to stopping those who push drugs on the borough. The intelligence that we received led us to mount this operation that successfully finished this morning with nine arrests. "Our work will continue not only to crackdown on drug dealing but on all crime to make Lambeth a safer place for all those who live, work and visit." The night's promotions manager Megan Jones told PinkNews.co.uk: "The raid was civilised and with the full cooperation from staff and security personnel." She confirmed that they had no warning of the raid but were aware of the use of drugs in the venue. "Drugs is a problem across the board in Lambeth and the Vauxhall area. As the biggest venue, we are a likely place to conduct an operation of this kind." Jones said that the company operated a strict drugs policy with intensive searches, adding: "people complain that the searches are so thorough. We do as much as possible, short of strip searching our customers." She said that they confiscate and hand over more illegal drugs found by bouncers than any other venue in the area. The club will remain closed during the weekend as the police are conducting scene searches. There has since been criticism of the police for taking photographs of clubbers – a particular worry for those not openly gay. Clubbers were blogging about the incident early on Saturday morning. Camera phones had captured the police raid – police can be seen selecting groups of clubbers to be searched and photographed. More on this story, including a YouTube video of the incident, is available from the pinknews.co.uk website on the link below. Ref: Pinknews.co.uk (m)