SHOOTINGS DROP 40% IN GANGS CRACKDOWN
SCORES OF ARRESTS IN POLICE OPERATION
SHOOTINGS have almost halved, and 180 people have been arrested in an operation to diffuse a violent gang war.
Scores of weapons, drugs and cars have been seized too.
A special team was set up as part of Operation Naseby in April last year after a total of 25 shootings mostly involving a feud between two rival criminal groups, in the space of 12 months in Salford.
Covertly, and sometimes by using highly visible patrols, the team collated intelligence in a bid to bring multiple prosecutions of the city’s gunmen and violent criminals.
Many key targets in the operation are behind bars.
Some have been sentenced, others recalled to prison, and there are 42 court cases pending.
More than 30 officers – including detectives, complex safeguarding officers, neighbourhood patrols, and pursuit-trained officers – were tasked with targeting offenders suspected of being involved in organised crime. The team has made 179 arrests, 180 vehicle seizures, recovered more than £500,000’s worth of drugs and searched more than 75 houses. Weapons recovered have included a shotgun, two loaded crossbows, a number of machetes and dozens of other knives and bladed articles. Due to a backlog of court cases due to the pandemic, a further 42 cases are currently waiting to be heard.
Despite several high-profile incidents the number of shootings in the city has fallen by 40 per cent – to 15 – in the last year.
In November, there were three shootings in five days in the city.
Worryingly in a spate last autumn, one in September, one in October, and three in the week commencing November 16, all resulted in people being shot. This was a marked shift from a series earlier in the year and in 2019 which saw windows, doors, and cars being blasted in a wave of ‘intimidation’ attacks.
In one ‘red mist’ act of outrageous recklessness, an innocent driver was lucky to avoid serious injury.
During a road-rage tiff, another driver got out his vehicle and levelled at shotgun at him before firing.
He suffered a serious injury to his hand.
A few days later a sniffer dog led police to a cache of ammunition in a spinney next to the River Irwell.
The live shotgun cartridge and 11
9mm bullets recovered could be linked to the road-rage incident on nearby Littleton Road in November.
The climate was dangerously mirroring the tit-for-tat shootings and attacks in the city when a feud between two different crime groups played out on its streets left people dead an maimed.
That began in 2015 and progressed to the machine gun murder of Paul Massey in July 2015 and an innocent mother and her son being shot in the legs in October 2015, and
John Kinsella being murdered in May 2018.
But Operation Naseby has achieved success in reducing the number of shootings in the city. Twenty people have been recalled to prison, and numerous other offenders have been convicted of a range of drug, driving, and firearms offences, including several targets from the outset of the operation.
This includes Jamie Swindells, 22, of Hereford Road, Eccles, who was convicted in September last year of possession of a bladed weapon, and possession with intent to supply crack cocaine after he was stopped in a vehicle and searched by officers. Swindells was believed to be involved in the dispute in the Kersal and lower Broughton area in April last year, which was one of the catalysts that prompted the hub’s launch. He is now serving a five-and-a-half year sentence. Last week, Olatunde Kuberofsky, 23, from Salford, was jailed for more than two-and-a-half years for possession with intent to supply crack cocaine, heroin and cocaine, and assault of an emergency worker, following a vehicle stop in Seedley. Kuberofsky tried to run away from the vehicle and physically assaulted an officer prior to being detained; subsequent searches found he was in possession of large quantities of Class A drugs and money.
This week, Tony Partington, 30, of Southgarth Road, and Spencer Candland, 36, of Langworthy Road, were jailed after they were found to have ore than £150,000 worth of cannabis in their car boot and at Partingon’s address when stopped by officers in Langworthy in February last year.
They were each sentenced to twoand-a-half years in jail.
Detective Chief Inspector Rick Thompson, head of proactive Salford CID, said: “A year on from the start of the Op Naseby disruption hub we can see the positive impact that the relentless work from our dedicated team has had on the streets of Salford.”
Late last year figures revealed that a third of all shootings in Greater Manchester were in Salford.
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