It was 6pm, but still daylight, when the disturbing scene unfolded - one which confirmed to people in a Cheshire suburb that gangs had taken hold in their town. Six men, all armed with machetes, fighting in the middle of the road in high summer.
The terrifying incident, in Crewe, is believed to have been triggered by a feud between a Manchester based county-lines drugs gang and another local to the area. That kind of violence is just one reason why a year-long operation - codenamed Apollo - was launched by Cheshire Constabulary's Serious Organised Crime Unit.
"Parks should be where people can go and play footie with their kids or go for a walk," he says. "I don't want people staying out of the local park because there are people dealing crack and heroin in there. But DI Balfour says a "relentless" purge of the gangs is having an impact. Last year the number peaked at 85. It's now down to 40 - but he says 70 in total have been stopped, as new operations which spring up to replace those taken out get dismantled, before yet more entrants to the market flood in.
The suspect, John Hodgin, 23, of Manningham Road, Liverpool, was jailed for four years in May this year for being concerned with the supply of class A drugs. "We see people who want to get involved for the financial benefits of it - others do so because they are in debt or are forced to," DI Balfour says.
"There are numerous examples of a person in a town being quite prepared for people to come and deal drugs at their house. So you get a line in - we take the controller out - but that address in Cheshire is then used by the next team. So the person in the house is complicit in it - and we will prosecute them too.
Sentences totalling 115 years have been given to the 30 people convicted so far. The longest sentence was nine years nine months for Jordan Taylor who was controlling a drugs line in Crewe. "There is no point in hitting only the foot soldiers in Cheshire because that will leave the controller. And if we only hit the controllers the foot soldiers will work for another team. So it is important that we co-ordinate and take the whole backbone out of it. We found early on that if we didn't do that they just reappear.
"We had controllers in Manchester and foot soldiers in Crewe have a disagreement and we ended up with a machete fight in the street. It was weekend, 6pm, and we have six people fighting - that is what county lines causes when people fall out. "We used to deal with the drugs we seized on a particular day. We have changed and the way we build our cases is to prove people were dealing for 30, 60, 120, days before that.
Gangs Cheshire Suburb Machetes Violence Drugs Feud Apollo Police
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