UPDATE: |Two arrested as police raid house with their boss watching on News

‘There is no earthly point carrying a warrant card if you don’t go around arresting bad people’

In an upstairs room at Longsight police station, around a dozen officers sit looking at a huge projector screen.

They all stand as the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Chief Constable, Stephen Watson, who has come to witness first hand the type of ‘bread and butter’ work his officers do, enters the room.

They return to their seats and the briefing begins. On the screen are the faces of two men. They are, according to Sergeant Jonathan Lobley who is addressing the officers from a lectern at the front, two suspects they have been tasked with arresting.

It is in connection with an alleged ‘distraction theft’ at a cashpoint in south Manchester earlier this year.

The alleged victim, in his 40s, had just withdrawn hundreds of pounds when, it is alleged, his attention was diverted and the money swiped from his pocket.

The cashpoint has been a ‘hotspot for theft offences, we are told.’

As part of the investigation, officers scoured CCTV.

Pictures of the building police are to execute warrants at, and potential ‘escape routes’, are now flashed up on the screen, with the officers told they are being split into two teams, one responsible for the detention of each suspect.

Another senior officer urges the troops to inform and reassure those living nearby, who will likely see what’s going on and ‘will want to know what we’re doing.’

Shortly afterwards, the officers make their way to a convoy of vans waiting outside the station before making the short trip to the address in south Manchester.

When they arrive on the street, the officers stream out of the vans and get in their positions. The battering ram is readied but in the end, officers do not need to force entry.

They are allowed in and arrest two men at the scene.

Chief Constable Watson goes inside the building, which is surrounded by scaffolding and resembles a building site, and watches as searches are carried out.

Ch Con Watson says he feels it is important to keep himself ‘in touch with the reality of life for our police officers’ who ‘see two or three things a day that most people never see in their lives.’

Ultimately, he says, ‘this is what it is all about, arresting people and bringing them to justice.’

“This is what the public pays for and this is what the public expects,” he says. “There is no earthly point carrying a warrant card if you don’t go around arresting bad people.”

The Chief Constable wanders over and says hello to a woman living nearby who stands in her garden and watches the commotion, which lasts around half an hour, before most of the officers leave and make their way back to the stations, with the suspects.

One, aged 35, is later charged with theft from a person and will now appear in the court. The other, aged 40, is released with no further action.

‘Officers are so passionate about this type of crime’

Back at the station, two of the officers in charge of neighbourhood policing in the area say the investigation is the perfect example of their specialist neighbourhood teams working together.

Every area of Greater Manchester now has a neighbourhood tasking team to proactively tackle crime, a neighbourhood crime team to investigate crimes and bring offenders to justice, and neighbourhood policing teams who are named officers for each ward and act as the ‘bobbies on the beat.’

In this case, the neighbourhood crime team (NCT) investigated the alleged offence with the neighbourhood tasking team, led by Sgt Lobley, then given the job of identifying where the suspects may be.

Detective Inspector Natalie McDonald, from the central neighbourhood crime team based at Longsight Police station, says: “People in the community, if you ask them what’s really important to them, it’s burglaries, it’s robberies, it’s theft from motor vehicles, theft from person.

“It is really important for communities that they feel safe when they go to a cash point. So I think it’s a really good example of one of the types of neighbourhood crimes we deal with.”

Detective Chief Inspector Ian McNabb, who oversees the NCTs across the city area, says: “The officers are so passionate about this type of crime.

“Burglary, robbery. Other than serious sexual offences, they are some of the most intrusive offences that people become victims of.

“Someone burgling or ransacking your home, you never feel safe there again. Street robberies and thefts, they knock people’s confidence.” They have a ‘long-lasting impact’, he adds.

He says the Chief Constable’s commitment to pursue all ‘reasonable lines of enquiry’ for every crime and having dedicated, specialist investigators in each area to do this was having a marked difference, with theft from person, the type of allegation being dealt with today, down by 773, 21 per cent, in the district in the year ending April 2024, and burglary down 17 per cent.

“We attend every burglary now, with scenes of crime officers. We went through a period where you were lucky if you saw a scene of crime officer at a burglary,” DCI McNabb says.

“Now their objective is to go to every one. I think that victim contact and victim care is essential. And the figures show trust and confidence is on the up.

“People may not want to go to court, but they do expect to be spoken to by a police officer and to kept updated about an investigation.”

DI McDonald says:”Burglars and criminals are smarter. You look at some of the robberies we get, you would look at the footage of those and think it’s nigh on impossible to identify them.

“We’ve got people with balaclavas on, face coverings, hoods down. But the team will leave no stone unturned in trying to identify them. Extensive trawls, really meticulous stuff. They do a great job.”

“For us, that’s what we want to do, we want to be able to ring a victim and say ‘we’ve found them,'” she says.

“Most people who join the cops, join because they want to lock up robbers and burglars,” DCI McNabb adds. “We really buzz off it. And we’re willing to go the extra mile to do it.”