Snow blanketed Oldham on Tuesday 7 January 2025 as more than 100 officers swept through the borough in the latest Operation AVRO crackdown, netting 38 arrests and seizing £12,000 worth of illegal vapes before lunchtime.

The dawn-to-dusk blitz began with pre-sunrise warrants executed by Challenger teams hunting priority offenders, then shifted to the Bee Network where transport officers stopped 150 vehicles, seized five cars and wrote 16 traffic offence reports. Knife arches greeted commuters at Mumps line stations while 120 passengers caught travelling without valid tickets were fined on the spot.

Trading Standards joined six raids that recovered 1,000 illicit vapes, four immigration warrants were served in Sholver, and neighbourhood teams handed out free home-security kits to shoppers braving the snow at Elk Mill Retail Park and the Spindles town-centre complex. A Broadway checkpoint in Chadderton, run with the DVSA and council licensing staff, saw five vehicles seized within an hour and three taxi licences revoked; one motorist was arrested on suspicion of drug-driving in conditions police said “could have caused serious injury to an innocent member of the public”.

With most schools closed, local students still filed into Oldham divisional headquarters for a careers Q&A while afternoon patrols in Lees targeted the ‘Fatal 4’: drink and drug-driving, speeding, mobile-phone use and seat-belt offences. Chief Superintendent Estelle Mathieson, briefing staff at Oldham Leisure Centre before deployments, insisted the operation showed “we will be relentless in our pursuit of criminals, whilst being tenacious and determined to get the right outcome for victims”.

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