A FEMALE pensioner bends down and watches as her crown green ball slowly rolls down the pristine bowling green.
But the picture-perfect English scene soon descends into chaos courtesy of a gang of laughing yobs, who launch a terrifying attack.
SnapchatTerrifying footage from a 1am gun attack on a home in Oldham, which was live-streamed on Snapchat[/caption]
Greater Manchester PoliceOperation Vulcan officers have carried out raids and arrests across Greater Manchester, including in Derker[/caption]
GMPMore than £300,000 worth of drugs were seized during one week of raids in December[/caption]
The elderly members of Stoneleigh Park ladies’ bowls team were forced to flee in terror as bricks and stones were thrown at them in one of the many anti-social attacks that has plagued this deprived pocket of Oldham.
Drug gangs have so terrorised the residents of the Derker area of the Greater Manchester town that many have been left too scared to leave their homes at night.
Over recent months, cops say the violence has been “escalating” with a spate of arson attacks and shootings, including four since November.
Balaclava-wearing teenage thugs aged as young as 13 have been caught delivering crack cocaine, heroin and cannabis on £5,000 e-bikes that plague the roads, with the shadowy gang leaders behind them found operating Breaking Bad-style crystal meth labs.
Kids, aged ten and 11, have even confessed to cops and teachers in class: “I am frightened of the men on bikes”.
But while one officer has compared the area to the “Wild West” after shocking recent events, police are now fighting back against the drug gangs operated by local white British crime families.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have launched a two-month crackdown called Operation Vulcan and local residents claim the arrests of suspected dealers has already made a big difference.
The raids have also revealed the chilling new tactics used by gangs to turn vulnerable children into drug mules, with police telling us how youngsters are “gifted” pricey e-bikes, then forced to work off the ‘debt’ when they are seized by cops.
Grandmother Carol Knight, 76, said: “I have been scared to go out at night. But it feels like the area is getting back to what it was – much safer.
“There have been so many shocking incidents. My car was torched outside my own home.
“It was terrifying – they wrongly thought I was a grass as my daughter is a councillor.
“There was even an attack on the ladies’ bowling team. They were playing on the bowling green when they were pelted with bricks and stones by young lads. It was terrifying for them.”
Live-streamed shootings
A mum-of-three, who did not want to give her name, said: “We had a lad jump into our garden after being chased by cops.
“You get lads wearing balaclavas riding around selling drugs and causing trouble. A neighbour’s car was torched and bricks have been thrown through people’s windows.
“It can be scary at night. I don’t let my kids play out in the street.”
GMPA gun recovery from an Oldham address[/caption]
GMPVape vials were also found in one of the raids[/caption]
GMPCops lead away a suspect cornered during the operation[/caption]
GMPLocals say gangs terrorize their streets on high-powered e-bikes[/caption]
Unemployed Paul Hill, 37, said: “You see kids on scooters and bikes dropping drugs off all over the place.
“They race up and down on off-road bikes and scare people by almost knocking people off pavements.
“There are a lot of gangs that come into the area, they are pretty brazen about it as people are scared of them.”
There’s still a long way to go. The gangs are still here – they have just retreated for a bit
An unnamed father
In May last year, a shocking gun attack at a home just a mile away from Derker was live-streamed on social media site Snapchat.
Footage appeared to show a man firing at least six shots through a window in the 1am attack on a home on Prince Edward Avenue.
Cannabis plants worth £4million were found at farms in the area in just a month, while another sinister case saw an 18-year-old man shot as he got out of a taxi by a gunman on an e-scooter.
Oldham’s crime gangs
Oldham is seven miles north-east of Manchester. It rose to prominence in the 19th century and was a boomtown of the industrial revolution with textile manufacture at its centre.
However, it now has high levels of deprivation and crime – two years ago, Oldham was named among the UK’s crime hotspots in a landmark report advising the Government on its levelling-up strategy.
A 2022 document estimated there were 176 organised crime groups (OCGs) operating across Greater Manchester, with almost a quarter of the gangs identified said to have access to guns.
Drugs are said to remain the ‘primary crime type’ for the vast majority of the gangs.
Of the 176 active organised crime groups, 55 are said to be ‘impacting the city of Manchester’ – accounting for 31 per cent of all known OCGs in the county.
Oldham and Salford have the second highest number of organised crime groups, with 19 and 18 respectively.
Happy Valley‘s Sarah Lancashire, radio presenter Nick Grimshaw, presenter Phillip Schofield, Coronation Street actress Shobna Gulati as well as TV science expert Brian Cox all come from the town in the foothills of the Pennines.
Former TV comedians Cannon and Ball and Take That‘s Mark Owen hail from there and ex-Manchester United and England midfielder Paul Scholes owns a £500,000 gym in the town.
Andy Kelvin / Kelvin MediaCarol Knight reveals residents are scared to go out at night[/caption]
MEN MediaForensics comb the scene in the aftermath of last year’s shocking gun attack on Prince Edward Avenue[/caption]
However, police raids are at last putting a dent in the drug dealing.
On one morning last month, an officer sawed a house’s door in half as another smashed it in with a large red hammer.
In a bedroom, cops found £7,000 in cash as well as a stash of crystal meth, cocaine, ketamine and party drug MDMA. Four men were arrested.
‘Debt bondage’
GMP has said the raids have disrupted the drug gangs and people are starting to feel “safer”.
There have been 35 arrests including possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence as well as drug dealing.
Nine people have been charged with various offences, while 31 cars and e-bikes have been seized along with drugs worth £50,000 and £11,500 in cash.
Chief Inspector Andy Torkington tells us: “We’ve had anti-social behaviour, drug dealing and nuisance off-road bikes.
“Those are issues that have caused the most misery for people on this estate. We’ve had women and children say they are scared to go to the shops at night.
The worrying rise of ‘ghost guns’
WHILE the UK’s gun laws remain far tighter than in the US, so-called ‘ghost guns’ are an ever-escalating concern for police.
Knocked up in garden sheds and bedrooms using 3D printers and tutorials online, these weapons have taken off in America and are increasingly favoured by crime gangs in Britain too.
In 2023, Graeme Biggar, head of the National Crime Agency, called for possessing 3D-printed gun blueprints to be made illegal after a four-fold rise in seizures.
Birmingham was among the hardest hit areas, overtaking London as the UK gun crime capital, with local MP Kaur Gill expressing concern over the “serious and growing threat”.
It’s known these weapons are falling into the wrong hands and many are desperate to obtain them – from potential terrorists to crime gangs and lone-wolf criminals.
Scores of thugs have been sent down for manufacturing ghost guns in recent years including Owain Roberts, 19, who was sentenced to nearly five years for trying to assemble an ‘FGC-9’ weapon – the letters stand for ‘F*** Gun Control’.
There was also Neo-Nazi Jack Robinson, 20, who was in the “advanced stage” of building a semi-automatic rifle and appeared to have planned a mass killing spree.
And Dion Matthews, 60, was jailed for 11 years after he produced four viable hybrid semi-automatic rifles and hundreds of rounds of 9mm ammunition.
The top cop said the force was “acting on intelligence to take out those causing the most harm” – notably drug dealers, who are employing ‘vulnerable young people’.
He added: “Incredibly the drugs have been everything from cannabis all the way up to crystal meth, amphetamines, crack cocaine and heroin.
“Children from 13, 14, 15 and up to young adults are involved in selling the drugs. We have seen debt bondage too, so they are given an expensive e-bike.
“If that bike is taken off them by the police, or they lose it or it is damaged then you are debt bondaged over that bike, so you have to sell more drugs to buy off that debt.”
GMP have held community events in Stoneleigh Park to improve relations with locals.
But there remains a long road ahead to brighter days and residents still fear a return of the recent dark days that have plagued Oldham.
One dad said: “The police have improved things but there’s still a long way to go. The gangs are still here – they have just retreated for a bit.”
GMPOperation Vulcan officers leading away a suspected county lines crook in Derker[/caption]
Andy Kelvin / Kelvin MediaGMP’s Chief Inspector Andy Torrington is leading the fightback against the crimewave[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
