The cop in charge of policing Stockport has made tackling the scourge of off-road bikes one of his first priorities. Chief Superintendent Lewis Hughes was appointed District Commander six-weeks-ago.
An experienced officer, he has been with Greater Manchester Police (GMP) since 2003. He joins the borough from the force’s Serious Crime Division, where he led a number of high-profile and complex investigations – including the fire at Bismark House Mill in Oldham and a number of murder enquiries.
Speaking to the Manchester Evening News, he said: “It’s a great opportunity. I’ve been at GMP 21 years and absolutely love policing. This is quite different. I’ve come from serious crime, investigating complex matters. But it’s as exciting as ever to be putting the uniform on, getting out on the streets and tackling different challenges.”
“I’m really glad I’m here,” he added. “Everyone has made me feel really welcome. It’s a great town. It’s a great place to live and it’s a safe place to live. It’s a great place to bring up your family and to open a business. We want to keep it that way.
“Obviously, there are different areas in Stockport, some focused around the town centre and some in the suburbs and more rural. They’ve all got different challenges and crime types – as anywhere does.”
Over the coming months, Chf Spt Hughes said there will be a ‘refocus’ on neighbourhood policing. “Our focus is to have a highly visible neighbourhood resource, in the town centre, and each of the communities, so you don’t get a different level of service regardless of where you live,” he said.
Stockport is now regularly hailed as one of the most up and coming towns and desirable places to live in the country. The town centre is in the midst of a huge £1bn regeneration, with a number of large town centre high-rises set to open in the coming months, which will see an influx of hundreds of new residents. Chf Spt Hughes said as a local force, he and his colleagues needed to be ‘ahead’ of that.
“With a population increase, you may see an increase in crime,” he added. We’re yet to see that. But we need to be smart in relation to that and prevent incidents occurring and proactively problem solve.
“With any change across Stockport we’ll look to be ahead of that. The opening of the new transport interchange, and the new Viaduct Park on its roof, raised concerns over anti-social behaviour with some saying they feared it could become ‘the new Piccadilly Gardens‘. Particularly after police were called to reports of yobs causing trouble just a day after it opened.
“The interchange is excellent for the town, because of its great transport links. It’s our job to ensure it’s absolutely safe. Because it was shiny and new, yes in those first few days you may have seen a few incidents, but since then they have been few and far between. And when they do occur they are well policed and well responded to.
“It’s not a place we will tolerate people coming to loiter, commit anti-social behaviour and other criminality.”
One of the first issues he and his officers are looking to tackle is off-road biking. On Thursday (November 14), Chf Spt Hughes was in Stockport town centre as part of a day of action.
He said off-road bikes and electric bikes are often stolen to then be ‘used in further crime and high-risk activity such as anti-social behaviour’. “Often that leads to more complex matters for us to police.” he added.
“They are desirable to young people, teenagers, people in their early 20s. They can be a cheap and easy mode of transport, but they can be easily modified and then they’re ideal to commit crime. And that’s why they are desirable to steal.”
He said the scale of the problem was hard to quantify as ‘we don’t know what proportion of reports are making their way to us’. “But if one person is seeing that bike coming razzing past, then so are a lot of people,” he added.
Motorbike officers were among those deployed as part of the operation as they raised awareness, and gathered intelligence about them.
“We need the public to have confidence to engage with us,” Chf Supt Hughes said. “We need to know who is using these bikes and where they are stored at night. If we see you driving one in Stockport, we will stop you and look at enforcement action.
“But more than that, we’ll be more intelligent than that. We’ll be targeted. We’ll be showing up in the early hours, at people’s home addresses and people’s garages, and if you’ve got an off-road bike or an illegal bike that’s been modified, used in anti-social behaviour used in crime, or made off from the cops on it, we’ll be looking to take them.”
Although the bikes do not have number plates which can make detection harder, he said: “We do have ways to identify who’s riding the bikes, where they are and coming and going from so we’ll be working smarter and working harder on this issue.”
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