680 held in blitz on drink-fuelled louts
Date published: 24 August 2009
Operation in Oldham town centre involving police, Trading Standards and licensing officers.
MORE than 680 people, including 48 from Oldham, were rounded up and arrested in an unprecedented 24 hour police crackdown on drunken yobs.
One-third of the Greater Manchester Police’s entire staff, amounting to 3,000 officers of all ranks, flooded the county’s streets and raided homes, all available police cells were opened, and prison busses were drafted in to help cope with the number of arrests.
Operation Admiral was one of the biggest operations ever run by the force, and ran from 5am on Friday to 5am on Saturday in a bid to rid the region’s town and city centres of the alcohol-fuelled crime which has become a regular part of weekend activity. It followed BBC’s “Panorama” screening of Oldham’s binge-drinking and late-night violence problems, and the revelation that Yorkshire Street alone suffered a 200 per cent increase in serious violent incidents in the first four months of this year.
Oldham councillor Mark Alcock, who is in charge of licensing, welcomed the hard-hitting operation, saying: “We would welcome this type of action more often.
“It will help to make Oldham town centre a safe place for people to come, day or night, which is what we all want.”
The culprits felt the full might of the force as officers hunted down criminals responsible for alcohol-fuelled violence and those who had jumped bail and were on the run.
Hundreds of arrests were made in dawn raids on Friday, during which drugs and an AK47 rifle was recovered, before officers moved into the next phase of the operation.
Over the course of Saturday and throughout the evening, offers visited licensed premises and warned retailers about the need to sell alcohol responsibly.
The high-profile operation included the use of mounted police in Oldham on Friday afternoon, and knife arches — which use metal detectors to reveal hidden weapons — were set up at the bottom of Fairbottom Street and in Yorkshire Street from 9pm Friday until 5am on Saturday.
The crackdown was mounted after a Government survey revealed one in three people across the North-West saw drunk or rowdy behaviour as a major issue. A key part of Operation Admiral was to encourage sensible drinking, linking into the Think safe, Drink safe campaign.
Police worked alongside a number of agencies including the Crown Prosecution Service, the court system and local authorities.
Arrests included one in Castleton, Rochdale, of a drunken man who was carrying two 9in kitchen knives, a number of pubs were closed down for flouting licensing laws, and officers discovered a cannabis farm behind a false wall in a pub in south Manchester.
An inspection of door staff credentials and fingerprint checks uncovered counterfeit identification cards and false details given by workers,
GMP Deputy Chief Constable Simon Byrne said Operation Admiral had sent out a powerful message to violent criminals who all to often carried out unprovoked assaults on innocent people.
He said violence led to real fear of going out for victims and their families, and warned those responsible: “This sort of behaviour will not go unpunished.
“This is just the start of an ongoing process what will see GMP continually target those responsible for violent crime until it sinks in.”
Assistant Chief Constable Gary Shewan added: “We know that the level of drunken aggression is unacceptable in our towns, and so to tackle the problem many operations were run overnight to challenge drunkenness, arrest those whose behaviour places other people in fear and at risk, and tackle those licensees who are not prepared to work with the authorities to make their premises safe for their customers.”
Police urged people who want to go out and have fun to keep safe by sticking with friends, pacing their drinks and planing their journey home.
