Wigan police joins forces with numerous organisations to tackle serious and organised crime

The Greater Manchester Police district has launched its new organised crime strategy the Place and Community Safety Partnership.

This is a multi-agency group made up of key partners including Wigan Council, Home Office Immigration Enforcement, the Department for Work and Pensions, National Probation Service, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service and local charities, who will “relentlessly pursue” criminal networks operating locally.

With a common vision and a shared goal to make communities safer, this operation will use all powers, policies, and levers available to target every element of criminality, whether that’s evicting nuisance tenants, exposing benefits fraud and money laundering, or illegal dog breeding and drug supply.

This collaborative approach enables police and partners to develop innovative and preventative measures to disrupt the organised criminal networks and deny them access to money, assets, and infrastructure, making a very real difference in making our communities safe and feeling safer.

To celebrate the launch, officers executed warrants Worsley Hall early on Friday morning (September 1) when, in response to community concerns regarding county lines drug dealing and anti-social behaviour.

A number of items were seized, consistent with a suspected drugs operation, including a burner phone, often used to send out bulk messages to customers advertising drugs.

Police also made a number of safeguarding referrals to relevant partner agencies.

Neighbourhood police also patrolled hot spot areas to engage with teenagers and young adults who could be at risk of exploitation by organised crime groups.

Police were joined by the Community Resilience Team from Wigan Council who are responsible for working with residents and tenants, securing closure orders of properties involved with criminality.

Since May, working in partnership, police have made 31 arrests for offences linked to organised crime, made seven safeguarding referrals, seized large amounts of crack cocaine and heroin, and 38 nuisance properties have been shut down – a record amount of closure orders across Greater Manchester.

In addition to tackling those responsible for the exploitation of young and vulnerable victims, police supported partners at Wigan Council to carry out a range of community engagement sessions to help educate the local communities on how to spot the signs of exploitation, and how they can help play their part in helping safeguard those who may be at risk.

This included an Estate Tidy-Up and Talk with Tenants event earlier in the week attended by the estate caretaking team, the Neighbourhood Tenancy team, and local neighbourhood police.

This gave residents visible reassurance that support is available and was an opportunity for the community to share concerns and what issues they want to see tackled.

This new multi-agency operation will see partners meet on a monthly basis to discuss local concerns, fill intelligence gaps, and ensure a robust plan is in place to tackle the identified threat.

But it won’t just be about pursuing the criminals.

Every top-level gang member started somewhere, so a really important element to the success of this multi-agency partnership is prevention and ensuring safeguarding is in place from an early stage to stop our young people progressing through the ranks.

The impact of serious organised crime is far reaching, and it can manifest itself in many insidious ways, but as this operation evolves and embeds, we will endeavour to protect our communities, and prevent young people and vulnerable adults from being targeted by organised crime groups.

Det Insp Patrick Wood from GMP Wigan district said: “We’ve all been working in silos in a way, the police, council and other partners almost tackling the same problem or the same people.

"What we’ve identified is that as good as that works at times we’ve needed to pull something together where we’re all on the same page, all tackling the same people causing harm in Wigan.

"Its our push to try and use every tactic and every available opportunity to get rid of organised crime in the community.”

The Wigan Serious and Organised Crime Partnership Board will meet once a month to identify people and target areas and how they can combat issues.

Det Insp Wood said: “When we meet each month, the partners will be asked to bring a target whether that be a person or a location.

"We will then discuss that at the meeting, we’ll agree the targets, then we’ll go away and through the tactical board we will come up with a plan of how we’re going to tackle it.

"As part of the feedback with the work that the Greater Manchester Combined Authority did – I can only talk about Worsley Hall but I’m sure its the same across the district – there was a feeling of being a bit abandoned by the police and a fear of providing information to the police because they don’t know what gets done with it.

“We’re trying to change that mindset that through the new neighbourhood policing model as well, the whole neighbourhood teams in the area are changing, they’re out on the beat more, the PCSOs are out more.

"We want to get that information off people to help them and their communities get rid of this problem.

“Hopefully people will start to see the benefits of what we are doing here in Wigan.”

Coun Dane Anderton, portfolio holder for police, crime and civil contingencies said: “The safety of our residents is paramount, and we are proud to work together under the Place and Community Safety partnership to combine intelligence and ensure long-term robust plans are in place to tackle organised crime.

“Our teams have been working in communities, listening to residents’ concerns, and helping prevent young people from taking the wrong path through early intervention.

"Its already impressive results are testament to the significant collaborative work within the partnership.

"We are keen to build on this and the new operation will continue the great work being achieved as a partnership.”