"We will shut you down": Police issue another stark warning as more fake designer gear pulled from Manchester's 'Counterfeit Street'
22.02.2024 - 23:07
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Police have issued another stark warning after yet more fake designer gear was pulled from the shelves along Manchester's notorious 'Counterfeit Street', saying: "We will shut you down".
It's been a year and a half since Greater Manchester Police launched the specialist 'Operation Vulcan', first set up to rid the Cheetham Hill and Strangeways of the counterfeit goods trade and associated organised crime. Cheetham Hill and Strangeways was also well-known across the UK as the place to go for cheap, fake designer goods.
The trade in counterfeit goods was estimated by National Trading Standards to be worth £8.6 billion per year, with the area of Cheetham Hill believed to be linked to almost 50 per cent of this trade, earning it the title of the UK 'capital for counterfeit.'
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More than 200 counterfeit shops have since been shut down, over 1,000 tonnes of counterfeit items repurposed and recycled, over half a million pounds in cash seized.
Over the past year and a half, pictures of officers booting down doors, making arrests, seizing hauls of fake designer goods and boarding up rows of shops has become a familiar sight.
In October 2022, plans were unveiled to bulldoze the infamous Counterfeit Street, in a radical move to smash what police said was a 'national magnet for criminality'. Buildings along Bury New Road have had their shutters pulled down, with recent plans announced for a number of high-rise blocks to be built in the area.
On Thursday (February 22), Inspector Jackson from the Cheetham Hill Neighbourhood Policing Team issued another stark message, that the selling of counterfeit goods is 'no longer welcome'.
It comes as officers, while on proactive