From cars to coaches: Operation Wolverine plays key role as GMP seizes over 10,000 vehicles in less than a year

The dedicated operation continues to go from strength-to-strength as it takes illegal vehicles linked to serious crime off the road.

With a month to spare in the calendar year, Greater Manchester Police is pleased to showcase it broke the 10,000 mark at the start of December 2023.

Breaking the 1,000 monthly marks back in July 2023 and then again in August 2023, the use of ANPR and mobile app have played a vital role in smashing its own records.

The newest Greater Manchester Police milestone comes as the force increased its investment into the Roads Policing Unit, which is now fully operational.

Operation Wolverine, a constant proactive operation, is helping GMP to make Greater Manchester safer and also reduce the number of serious and fatal collisions on motorways and roads, seeing a 20% reduction since 2021.

The operation gives officers the power to seize uninsured vehicles and those driven without the correct licence through a specialist team of traffic officers who have worked in the unit which was set up in 2006 to specifically tackle this type of crime, as it addresses loopholes in insurance legislation.

Alongside completing a two-year programme to upgrade roadside Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras and replace them with new ones across the force, ANPR cameras have been installed at additional sites in areas where criminals travel and use vehicles to commit crime. Showcasing it is a key tool in these successes, helping to detect, deter and disrupt criminal activity.

The Cleartone mobile ANPR app for officers’ mobile devices has also been a significant factor in the substantial increase in vehicle seizures in recent months, as it allows alerts to be received direct from nearby ANPR cameras.

GMP’s Specialist Operations Branch have had access to the technology since May 2023. Since then, vehicle seizures under Section 165 of the Road Traffic Act have improved markedly, seeing numbers jump by nearly 30% and 50% respectively in terms of seizures and Operation Wolverine in its first month.

In addition to this, Operation Wolverine scooped two awards in October 2023 work continued to make Greater Manchester’s roads a safer place. The first accolade came at the UK Road Offender Education Awards where the team picked up the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s award for ‘Outstanding Contribution for Road Safety’, before winning the ‘Operation of the Year’ award at the Chief’s Constable’s Annual Awards at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium.

Whilst funding from seized vehicles that are auctioned if they are not recovered by the owner goes towards community projects to help prevent and tackle crime.

Specialist Operations Branch Sergeant Mike Lawrenson said: “We are extremely proud of the figures which show the operation is successful and only getting better. Our aim is to adopt a hard ‘disrupt and retain’ stance to ensure we deny criminals their assets.

"I would like to reiterate the work we do is by disrupting and retaining vehicles from criminals and not people who have made a genuine error or honest mistake. We do not target the ‘innocent motorist’ – it is those who participate in criminal use of the road network through driving impaired, ignoring driving legislation and obtaining insurance and licenses dishonestly at the expense of the vast majority of those who are law abiding.

“Naturally, our workload has increased, tripling over the past 18 months so we have had to remain committed to our task of keeping the Greater Manchester roads safe, dealing with over 5,000 people in the last year, meaning we have removed some dangerous vehicles from the hands of criminals who use our road network.

“Uninsured vehicles can have catastrophic and serious consequences for most people who use our motorways and road network legally.

“Utilising technology to help within this area of work can also only continue to bring benefits to both the force and the public going forward.”

For more information of Operation Wolverine and how GMP use ANPR, please click the links below:

Seized vehicles | Greater Manchester Police (gmp.police.uk)

Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) | Greater Manchester Police (gmp.police.uk)