Operation Trivium: Foreign criminals targeted by Wolverhampton police
Wanted foreign criminals hiding in Wolverhampton were targeted in a day of action with intelligence police officers from The Hague.
Six teams patrolled areas of the city for four hours yesterday, as part of the international Operation Trivium.
The initiative, now in its ninth term, saw ground officers linked in with European counterparts from TISPOL – the European traffic police network.
The aim is to bring foreign criminals to justice, while freeing communities in Wolverhampton of illegal activities.
Inspector Sion Hathaway, from the Central Motorway Police Group, said: “Over the last few years Europe has become a borderless system, but check systems on people have not been able to keep up with that.
“People can create new identities and create a new life. Trivium is our chance to hit back and bring these people to justice.”
He added: “The beauty of Trivium is we have a control room in Birmingham, which has officers from the Environment Agency, National Crime Agency, plus we have representatives at The Hague.
“We can do checks on foreign nationals who have maybe run away from crimes in their own countries – it ranges from people wanted for murder to people without driving licences for our roads.”
Yesterday’s blitz saw officers in marked and unmarked cars checking the number plates of vehicles using Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras.
Motorist were then pulled over and their details checked.
PC Stu Edge said: “Once we get them stopped we can check their names against the European system. It is an effective tool not usually available to us.”
Officers also took down people wanted in the UK. A man was stopped and arrested in Bushbury after it was discovered he was wanted for an assault.
And in Dunstall Park, police started a pursuit of a Ford Focus, which was later found abandoned nearby.
