When Chief Constable Stephen Watson first took over the top job at GMP he described the UK's second largest police force as a 'sleeping giant'. His job was to awake it from its slumber.
The Manchester Evening News, on the other hand, described him as the policing equivalent of Big Sam Allardyce, drafted in with his team facing relegation and charged with task of turning things around sharpish. A few months earlier, after a damning inspection report, GMP became just the second force in the UK to be placed in special measures.
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