Officers from our new specialist 24-hour roads policing unit have arrested more than 70 people and recovered 19 stolen vehicles in their first month of action.

The dedicated Road Crime Team (RCT) was launched on 1 October.

Since then, working with partners, including trading standards and the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), the team has:

The team’s commitment to enforce and promote road safety, as well as action intelligence to disrupt organised crime groups operating in our county, has been evident from day one and continues at pace.

Eight days after they hit the road officers arrested a woman after finding an estimated £250,000-worth of class A drugs inside a car on the M6.

The vehicle was stopped at a service station in Norton Canes, leading to the discovery of around nine kilograms of drugs.

Last Tuesday (29 October) the team stopped a silver Audi A5 on the A500 at Audley and Alsager.

Several large bags of cannabis, weighing around 20kg in total and worth in the region of £100,000, were recovered from the boot.

The driver made off and we seized the car to examine it forensically, as part of continuing enquiries.

More recently, on Friday (November 1) officers stopped a HGV on the M6 following several calls to our control room from worried members of the public.

The driver was three times over the drink-drive limit and appeared in court the next day.

Chief Inspector Scott McGrath, who leads the road crime team, said: “This is a brilliant start for the team and we look forward to continuing to tackle criminality head on and working with a range of partners to make our roads safer.

“In 2023, 45 people sadly lost their lives on roads across our county. Each one of these deaths could have been avoided. This is why the new team is so committed to working proactively to enforce and promote road safety.

“Our message is very clear. If you drive a vehicle in Staffordshire in a way that puts other road users at risk, or you choose to use our road network for criminality, we are out there looking for you. And we will find you.”