Guns used in gangland hits are "changing hands" and police believe they can be linked to a series of crimes.
Senior Merseyside Police officers are working on the assumption that weapons aren't being disposed of and could be linked to a number of crimes. Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Mark Kameen told the ECHO the supply network isn't just limited to organised crime groups (OCGs) in Merseyside, with guns changing hands across several regions.
ACC Kameen said: "We have linked weapons to a series of crimes in the past. At any one time we have multiple linked series weapons and we're doing a whole host of work to track them, identify them and build conspiracies about them. We are seeing weapons moving between hands.
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"We have weapons moving across from Manchester to Merseyside which we never saw before. We see some of our linked weapons turning up in the Met which is potentially linked to County Lines.
"We've got crime groups moving across the country to embed themselves in new areas and they might take a firearm to enforce their criminality. That's just one hypothesis. They might also want to get rid of a weapon because it's too hot to retain."
The ECHO can reveal the new information regarding the use of firearms following the culmination of Thomas Cashman's trial. Cashman, 34, of Grenadier Drive, West Derby, was found guilty of killing nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel.
Drug dealer Cashman was chasing convicted criminal Joseph Nee when a shot from his Glock self-loading pistol went through the front door of Olivia's home on Kingsheath Avenue, Dovecot and hit the schoolgirl. Cashman was jailed for 42 years yesterday.
Olivia's death was in the same seven day period as Sam Rimmer, who was gunned down on Lavrock Bank, Dingle, and council worker Ashley Dale, who was killed in the back garden of her Old Swan home just days later.
Nan Jackie Rutter was shot in October in her Moreton home, while Elle Edwards was shot dead outside the Lighthouse in Wallasey while celebrating Christmas Eve with her friends. The ECHO has revealed that Mr Rimmer, Ms Dale and Ms Edwards were all shot by criminals using Skorpion machine pistols. The gun, described as "battlefield weaponry", is capable of discharging 850 rounds in a minute.
Merseyside Police said the use of Skorpions aren't limited to the region. The gun has been used in shootings across the country including in Manchester, Birmingham and London. But ACC Kameen added: "Merseyside criminals seem to either be at the forefront or very close to it around their involvement" in the distribution of the weapons since a batch arrived on UK soil in 2021.
Chief constable Serena Kennedy said: "I am concerned about the type of weaponry that we're seeing on the streets of Merseyside. It is frightening in terms of the way those Skorpion weapons work. Let's face it, people aren't going out and being trained on how to use those weapons.
"I think we are seeing the impact of those weapons on the streets of Merseyside. We know they have been used eight times over the past two years, but there is also really positive work ongoing. In Merseyside alone, we have seized five Skorpion type firearms in the past two years.
"This is a UK-wide problem and we are working really closely with the National Crime Agency (NCA) to identify how those weapons entered the UK, who has possession of them and identifying where they are and recovering them."
Merseyside Police is working in collaboration with the NCA to remove weapons from our streets and in recent weeks have recovered several weapons, including a Skorpion.
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