"Open the door it's the police!" At least four men and a host of drugs paraphernalia, fake cash, smoke covered walls, and a cocktail of smells greeted officers making a return visit to a flat of 'undesirables' just outside Rochdale town centre.
Residents and passerbys stopped and looked as a group of officers made their way up the temporary stairs to the flat with the noise of a drill removing the lock bringing more spectators. A solid kick eventually forced the door open and those in the flat had nowhere to go.
Three of these men would be led out of the Redcross Street flat in handcuffs, with cops hoping for a closure order on the smashed up property to bring the 'hell' for local residents to an end. It marked the persistent work of neighbourhood inspector Meena Yasin who has been knocking on dozens of nearby doors for weeks to build enough trust with people to raise their issues with the property in question.
From fighting and swearing through the night, to shouts of intimidation at any time of day, today's hit was a success for NI Yasin. "The last five years of life has become hell for so many residents because of just one property," she told the Manchester Evening News.
"Young people can’t play outside and people can’t go about their daily business. People’s quality of life has been severely affected. We’ve been working on this warrant for quite a few weeks and hope to get a closure order through. It’s a punitive power to remove someone but it sends a powerful message to the community.
"Success for me is that if a five-year-old is able to play outside and people are able to go about their daily business free of abuse that is success. The proof is in the pudding and we will continue to work to make people safe. I have a three year old myself and the thought that she couldn’t play outside because of one single individual, I just can’t think what that is like. That’s got to be worth fighting for."
Action took place across Rochdale today as Operation AVRO rolled into town. Cops conducted warrants at properties across the borough, a weapons sweep at Queens Park in Heywood discovered a saw in a bush, and dozens of drivers were reported, with some arrested, after checks on Queensway.
At the time of writing 32 arrests had been made on this day of action, with more set to come. Rochdale's turn with Op AVRO coincided with yesterday's (March 20) announcement that GMP is set to recruit 264 new neighbourhood police officers to proactively fight crime in communities, or as Chief Superintendent, Nicky Porter, puts it: "Making it a really difficult environment for criminals to thrive."
"There is an aspect of policing that is responding to 999 calls but a lot of the neighbourhood work is tackling anti-social behaviour, it might be speeding, it could be selling drugs, it could be organised crime groups, and it really gives us an opportunity to work in partnership and tackle some of those issues," Ch Sup Porter told the MEN at Rochdale Police Station, where officers were taking on refreshments before continuing their work until midnight.
"For us locally it’s about problem solving so you’ll see different styles of policing through the neighbourhood team around preventing things from getting worse. It’s about looking at things like civil orders and closure orders and making it a really difficult environment for criminals to thrive basically.
"This is about really getting to understand communities and what’s really key to really good neighbourhood policing is getting consent from the communities that we police, having community engagement, that people trust that we’re around, that we’re listening, and responding to the things that matter to them the most, that’s really crucial to neighbourhood policing.
"Key concerns we see in Rochdale are anti-social behaviour, drugs supply, speeding and irrational driving, and organised criminality. Be that organised gangs that are importing goods such as e-cigarettes which leads to our young people being exploited. From low level cannabis to young people being drawn in to dealing drugs and county lines issues so they are the key things we are tackling in Rochdale.
"At the heart of Rochdale is always child protection, we work really closely with the local authority to raise the bar for local children and young people in Rochdale and that manifests itself in many ways. That might be young people having a lack of education and in the community being drawn into criminality, to being exploited by gangs.
"It is about working together we can’t do our job unless the public are behind us and giving us valuable information and supporting our endeavours. But what the police have got are unique powers of arrest, and unique powers to stop and search people and remove criminals from the streets which is really important as it reduces the threat to the public but beyond that we need a range of services to intervene and prevent things from occuring again, and we can’t do that without our key partners
"I think we’re really lucky at Rochdale as we’ve got a great community and people want to live in a good and safe environment. So I think on the whole we have the public’s support and over the years we’ve had a really good partnership with the local authorities, with charities, the third sector. So I think we’ve come from a really good starting point in Rochdale but I see things like operation AVRO and enhancing our neighbourhood teams will only take it from strength to strength."
Rochdale Borough Council leader, Neil Emmott, welcomed the work, saying: "Today we welcome officers from Greater Manchester Police to the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale for Operation AVRO. We have officers across the whole GMP area concentrating on tackling crime within our borough. Last year was a huge success - and I am very appreciative of all the work GMP officers continue to do to protect our community."
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