Operation Hawk swoops to make life miserable for cross-border criminals

SAT in his police car as it makes its way through the outer suburbs of York, Sergeant Andy Quigley is clearly raring to go.

He has been on shift for the best part of five hours and despite a few promising leads, has yet to bring about an arrest. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s catch some baddies.”

Sgt Quigley, an officer of 22 years’ standing, is sat alongside his colleague Pc Lee Brook, with me in the back seat. The pair are part of North Yorkshire Police’s Road Crime Team, a small unit dedicated to tackling the known and suspected offenders using the county’s roadways for a variety of nefarious activities.

The night has been relatively quiet so far, but it isn’t long before things speed up. A call comes in reporting a known drug dealer heading down the A64 from Scarborough Leeds, and Sgt Quigley sets off in pursuit on the quiet late evening roads.

I’m pinned back in my seat as the speedometer reaches 120mph, 130mph, then 140mph, and it’s almost a relief when the car pulls over behind the suspect, where two police cars are already in attendance. The vehicle which is known to police, contains a woman driver and three men who are all searched.

Not long after, officers pull over another vehicle on the A19 north of York, making one arrest for possession of a controlled drug.

This type of stop and search is a common tactic for the Road Crime Team, whose “gold standard” expertise and facilities were until this summer put to use tackling roving drug dealers and burglars across the Yorkshire and the Humber region as part of the region’s fifth police force.

In July, police bosses opted to disband the regional police force, which had failed to yield the expected savings, and road crime units returned to their local forces. Despite this, North Yorkshire’s team of eight officers have the authority to cross county borders, if they want to, in pursuit of suspects.

Sgt Quigley tells me: “If we get some intelligence about a vehicle going on the A64 into Leeds we don’t just go to the border and then say it’s a West Yorkshire problem, if we have an interest in it we will be looking to intercept that vehicle and deal with its occupants. We have some special skills which allow us to work over and above what other cops are doing.”

I join them on an evening shift around the streets of York on one of the 18 days of work the unit carries out each month, all part of the force’s Operation Hawk.

The wide-ranging operation, launched in the summer, is designed to tackle the rural and cross-border crime that ranks as one of the county’s most serious crime priorities.

A recent survey revealed that rural crime in Yorkshire costs millions of pounds a year. Despite being the safest police force area in the country, half of all burglaries and a third of total crimes in North Yorkshire are committed by travelling criminals from outside the county, with residents in rural areas fearing they are particularly vulnerable.

As we drive from the unit’s base to York, where tonight’s activity will be taking place, Sgt Quigley tells me there is often a correlation between the area in which the crime takes place and the base of the criminals responsible.

Rural crime in the north of the county tends to be offenders from Middlesbrough and Darlington, while those from South Yorkshire often target the Selby area and those from West Yorkshire generally choose Tadcaster or York.

Prior to Operation Hawk being launched in the summer, Sgt Quigley says the response to the problem from North Yorkshire was “probably not as targeted”.

“Cross border crime has always been a massive factor in North Yorkshire policing plans,” he says. “It is a massive county with a massive road network. When you consider how many cops there are here they have huge areas to cover. We can go to Scarborough on a job and the next job is Kirkby Lonsdale, which is an hour-and-a-half away at decent speed.”

This time of year, with the nights drawing in, often heralds a rise in activity among cross-border criminals, Pc Brook says. “It is the time they come over because they think they won’t get noticed as much.”

Since being launched in the summer, Operation Hawk has seen hundreds of vehicles searched and dozens of arrests made, as well as tens of thousands of pounds worth of property seized. Police in different parts of the county have their own schemes that feed into the overall operation, each with its specific area of criminality.

The Road Crime Team is at the vanguard of the high profile campaign, and is not slow to highlight its numerous successes. The night before I join them, the unit’s Twitter account reveals details of the arrest of three men from the Humberside police force area searched on the A64 after their vehicle broke drown. They were arrested for offences linked to gaming machine thefts, before being kept in custody and questioned by South Yorkshire Police on suspicion of similar crimes there.

In their previous guise as part of the regional team, where they drove cars with the instantly recognisable Yorkshire and the Humber police badge, word would often get around that they are in the area, meaning criminals would make themselves scarce.

The high performance cars now driven by the team look like traffic police vehicles and attract less suspicion as they scour the roads for criminal activity. Each car is equipped with an Automatic Number Plate Recognition camera, meaning the details of any vehicle that passes flashes up on Pc Brook’s screen within 0.4 seconds, along with a note about whether they are of interest to the police.

North Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner recently announced a £250,000 investment in the technology, and there are a number of fixed cameras around the county, so it’s unlikely criminals can now cross the border without being noticed.

Unlike most police units, once the team get a sniff of a suspect they pursue in pairs of cars, usually meaning four officers are on hand to secure the area and meaning a proper search can be carried out.

“We are looking at maximising our opportunities to catch criminals but in a safe, controlled environment,” Sgt Quigley says.

“We are not getting one vehicle behind you getting in a chase for miles and miles, we will get behind the vehicle with two or three of us and put the stop in. It allows us to get best evidence as we are in control of it straight away.”

Operation Hawk is headed by Assistant Chief Constable Paul Kennedy after his arrival in North Yorkshire from Cumbria Police in September. He said: “The Road Crime Team is tenacious in its work and will not stop until their targets have been arrested and brought to justice, or at the very least significantly disrupt their activities.

“Crucially, the team regularly operates inside neighbouring policing areas and work closely with police colleagues across the borders. My message to travelling criminals is a clear one: expect to be stopped and arrested if you come to North Yorkshire to commit offences. If we don’t arrest you here, we will not hesitate to track you down and arrest you at home, wherever that is.”

The Road Crime Team has its own dedicated section of the control room relaying information and officers are not required to respond to jobs nearby unless it is a “matter of life or death”.

The nature of the job, particularly on relatively quiet nights like tonight, means there can be a lot of waiting about, but Sgt Quigley says his team remains “proactive” and keen to hunt criminals. “If you could bottle the enthusiasm they have got and sell it you could make a fortune.”

Police are also coming to terms with the fact that, particularly in isolated rural areas of North Yorkshire, they need the help of the public. During a meeting of the National Farmers Union in Thirsk in May, farmers in the county spoke of their dissatisfaction with the force’s response to some types of crime.

They told crime commissioner Julia Mulligan that while there were exceptions where individual officers and force areas were highly motivated and effective, they often felt their calls were not treated seriously.

An article on the NFU’s website by North Yorkshire’s chief constable Dave Jones said it was vital for farmers, business and residents to take “basic steps to keep criminals at bay”, including installing effective alarms and CCTV, and keeping windows, doors and gates locked.

Sgt Quigley says: “There are all sorts of rural watch schemes that look out for vehicles that should not be there, rather than the police being solely responsible for it we have realised we need to embrace the help of the public.”

He adds: “I have seen a massive improvement in technology and how we do our day-to-day business in 22 years. Before it was, dare I say it, a bit of luck. Tackling criminals, that is what the public want. We need to let them know that North Yorkshire is actively doing that in a way that most people would appreciate and criminals don’t appreciate.”

High cost of rural crime

Research published in August by insurer NFU Mutual revealed that the theft of farm vehicles, machinery, livestock and quad bikes from rural parts of Yorkshire cost the region £3.4m last year.

The statistics, based on claims data, suggest the majority of rural crime is planned rather than opportunist, with many high-value items stolen to order by gangs of organised thieves.

The NFU revealed last summer that one in three Yorkshire farmers were the victims of rural crime and nearly a third of offences were going unreported.

Spokeswoman Rachael Gillbanks said: “People in rural areas often feel vulnerable and isolated, and members often say they have had difficulty reporting crimes.”