'Calling one of the roads Hope Street is an insult' - police raid on 'Shameless' estate

“POLICE!” comes the shout just before 7am, although the sound of the maisonette’s front door being sawn in half may have already given the game away. 

“There’s no need for that, mate,” says the panicked reply as an officer smashes his way inside. 

It looks like any other family home from the outside. A tiny Incredible Hulk t-shirt dangles from the washing line, a small BMX with chunky tyres sits at the far end of the wall, and a mock hedge ball – the kind seen outside suburban bars desperate to appear classy - rests next to what used to be the front door. 

The hallway is standard, too. A couple of pendant lightshades here, an oversized clock with its hands pointing to Roman numerals there. Yet pop into the next room and, among the chaotic mess, there’s a set of electronic scales and a bucket overflowing with weed. 

On top of that, an officer stationed around the back of the same house sees someone launch a black softshell case from a window that contains suspected class-As.  

“It looks like cocaine,” he says, as he opens the case to reveal a fistful of white powder. 

The man being led away in cuffs to the awaiting police van has keys to two Audis. As well as a small stash of drugs in one of them, officers pull out two water bottles, some anti-freeze, a Mousetrap board game, and a child’s booster seat covered in crumbs. 

Although GMP champion Operation Avro as a way of reassuring the public that the force is a visible and credible presence, there’s no air of triumph as they raid five properties – all thought to be part of the same drugs supply chain - on this small estate in Audenshaw. Instead, it’s the constant reminders that children are the inescapable collateral damage from the trade. 

Chalk drawings daub the landing and stairwell leading to the raided home, with Minions and Space Invaders and smiling kids holding hands in the sunshine. Empty packets of Haribo sit next to empty drug baggies.  

“You scummy b******s,” a woman swaddled in a onesie calls from an overlooking balcony to a pair of photographers, while a neighbour in a Man City top films the unfolding drama on his phone. “Why are you taking pictures? There’s kids in there.” 

The implication being that bringing children up in a drugs den is completely normal. There’s no reason to doubt that the parents love their kids - their bedroom is the tidiest room in the house – but supplying drugs from the family home necessarily puts the youngsters in harm’s way. It exposes them to criminality and its myriad side-effects. Including police raids. 

All the commotion has woken another group of residents, their wiry torsos exposed as they come to see what all the fuss is about. Among them are yet more kids, all primary school age in pyjamas or oversized hoodies, who flit between two homes on the upper and lower decks.  

What chance have they got? Their parents are presumably doing their best, but their sunken faces and skeletal frames belie a history of struggle and addiction.  

The estate itself is a picture of desertion; an unmowed patch of grass has the cushions from a settee strewn across it, two car seats lie against the back of a house on Aldwyn Street, and while you’re not exactly tiptoeing through an assault course of dog muck, it’s something your nostrils pre-warn you about.  

The sheer concentration of people down on their luck here isn’t a coincidence. It’s designed to be a holding pen, a place of last resort, where people shout to each other across the courtyard from their balconies.  

Without a word of exaggeration, it feels like an open-air wing of a prison. It’s absolute chaos. Calling one of the roads Hope Street is an insult.  

“I call it the Shameless Estate,” says one resident who wants to stay anonymous. “I’ve been here for six years, but I hate it and it’s getting worse all the time. I have struggles with my mental health and I’m back on anti-depressants, but most people around here are.” 

Rumours have already started to circulate about who grassed up the dealers. One woman who has been watching events unfold from her garden strides barefooted towards officers: “I can’t believe I’ve got to come out of my house in my dressing gown to speak to someone to say that I’m not a grass. 

“I haven’t grassed on anyone, and now I’m probably gonna get my windows put through.” 

In truth, nobody has told on anybody. GMP have been tracking their suspects for months. Operation Avro – an ongoing scheme that rotates around Greater Manchester’s ten boroughs – just means that with backup from other parts of the city region, Tameside police happen to have the resources to carry out coordinated warrants today. 

Police had already made ten arrests before this set of just-after-dawn raids, with another half a dozen added by time we move on. It would have been an extra five, but one of the rubberneckers happened to have a warrant out on him. 

“It’s for f*****g shoplifting, apparently,” he says with resignation as he’s taken away after trying to sneak away out of his back gate. It’s not his first rodeo and likely won’t be his last.  

Avro isn’t just about carrying out warrants, however. 

“Operation Avro is about us taking the fight to the criminal,” GMP Superintendent Arif Nawaz told us earlier as the sun peeped over the horizon at Curzon Ashton’s ground, where today’s officers were given an alfresco briefing in the main stand.  

“It’s about bringing those who cause harm and commit crime against our communities to justice. The public tell us what they want us to do, and they want us to tackle crime, anti-social behaviour, they want to feel safe in their communities, and today is a real visible demonstration of our commitment and resolve to deliver against those requests. 

“The visibility is really important as it’s shows us out there tackling criminality. There’s the fact that we’re also working hand in glove with a range of partners; policing isn’t a single agency endeavour. We’ve got to work with partner agencies to help keep people safe.  

“We’ll be going out and targeting people who have been prioritised, for example, domestic abuse offenders, people who commit burglary, robbery, theft from person, inquisitive crimes. There’s also a lot of interaction with the public, so there’s a lot of work going on around domestic abuse victims and providing support and access to services for them.  

“There’s work going on at the transport interchange with TfGM, immigration and our police teams. The Metrolink and the bus network is where a lot of people will report anti-social behaviour or feeling a lack of safety, so we’re having a real visible presence around all that.” 

While it’s a welcome initiative, it still feels like a token gesture. The touring circus of battering rams and traffic checks will move onto another borough next time, leaving police in Tameside to go about their regular business until the big top rolls back into town in another year or two. 

Operation Avro raises more questions of TMBC’s beleaguered children’s services. Do police and the council talk to each other? If GMP were so certain that this house with the Incredible Hulk t-shirt outside was a drug dealer’s place, so certain that they’d smash the front door in, then why were kids there at all?  

The Children’s Commissioner said last week that Tameside Council’s children’s services were infected with a ‘toxic and bullying’ culture, with senior social workers resigning and leaving inexperienced staff to deal with enormous caseloads. One family in the borough had 17 different social workers in as many months. It’s a scandal that has done for TMBC’s chief executive, Sandra Stewart, a day after protesting that everything was blown out of all proportion. 

It isn’t, it’s a shambles. It isn’t the fault of the wet-behind-the-ears social workers, either. The blame lies entirely with the senior leadership who watched blithely as they steered the ship steered straight for the iceberg. 

Back on the Stanhope Estate, a gaunt mum strides ahead of her kids. 

“Come on, keep up, you’re going to school today.” 

Today. Going to class for them is out of the ordinary. It’s heartbreaking.