Operation sees police raid suspected chop shop
A suspected chop shop was raided by police as part of an all-force operation.
The early morning raid on the unit, which is located in the Black Country, came following the receiving by West Midlands Police of information about car crime in Wolverhampton and Walsall.
Officers from the force were joined by the Chief Constable Craig Guildford on the raid, which saw a large hole cut in the pull-down shutters for officers to enter the premises to search for stolen cars and vehicle parts.
The unit was filled with a large number of cars, with some in various states of disrepair, as well as an array of vehicle parts, including wheels and seats, and a number of bicycles and scooters were also visible on site.
No people were found on site after the police forced entry, although a TV with Youtube videos playing was found on the wall and several cars did arrive while officers were present.
Chop shops are a place criminals sell stolen cars to, with the cars sometimes stolen to order, depending on what vehicle the chop shop wants to repair and if the parts aren’t used to repair an existing vehicle, the serial numbers are often removed and the parts sold on websites to unwitting buyers.
The warrant and raid was part of Operation Advance, a new policing operation which has started in Wolverhampton and is being rolled out across the West Midlands and sees staff and officers from every policing department working together to deliver 24 hours of intensive policing operations.
The early morning raid on the suspected chop shop was one of a number of warrants and raids taking place across the Black Country, including arrests being made at separate locations for Class A drugs possession and concealing a large bladed item.
Chief Constable Guildford praised his officers for their excellent work across the region and spoke about the overall aims of Operation Advance.
He said: "The team has done an excellent job and this is a combination of CID, local neighbourhood and response cops, with people working today across the force on this.
"The overall aim is to come together as a big team and work on local priorities, so where we've got the intelligence together and we need to search some more and take care of everyday business, we can borrow the resources from all different areas of the force, come together as a bit team and execute the warrants.
"That's what's been happening today, with theft and misuse of drugs warrants and some nominals to arrest who we've been wanting to for a while, so it's a good amount of surge activity and about concentrating our resources on a local problem."
Sergeant Martin Williams led the operation and said the force had listened to the public about what mattered most to them.
He said: "This day of action has been taken in re-targeting what matters most for the community, which has been a huge amount of car thefts and the issue of a lot of cars being stolen and broken down for parts, which is what we believe this premises is doing.
"We will check the parts here, but what seems clear is there seems to be a good volume of car parts and from high value vehicles."
