it probably wasn’t a crack den but its fairly common these days for a positive squat,community building or even someones flat to be overtaken by more aggressive and violent dealers/criminals.
The practice is called “cuckooing”.
A chap I know spent so much time dealing with these types (often quite robustly) and keeping them out of a squat it eventually drove him to a nervous breakdown where the level of aggression and paranoia he had encountered made him even turn on his friends and comrades…
