From driveway to eBay: How cars stolen in Manchester are ending up in China

We zip down inner city backstreets at breakneck speed.

In no time, hunting as a pack, the team of drivers are convinced they have the Mazda surrounded.

We've followed the car to Marple, ending up in an area which is a maze of narrow roads and cul-de-sacs. I’m in the passenger seat of an Audi S3, next to Det Sgt Danny Kabal, who is commanding the group pursuit.

He issues instructions to deploy a stinger - a tyre-piercing device - should the target car fall into the trap laid by his team.

They are GMP’s Tactical Vehicle Intercept Unit, an elite team of drivers operating across a region infested with burglars and car thieves.

I joined the unit on a night shift from 8pm to 3am.

The night was a white-knuckle insight into the fight against a new trade - one which is causing misery to householders across Greater Manchester.

Increasingly, domestic burglaries are linked to global crime syndicates. The crime that starts with a thief on a driveway can end with a car dismantled and sold piece by piece on eBay to China - or shipped whole to Europe, Africa or Asia.  

“We are at the sharp end", Sgt Kabal says. "We are there to deal with those breaking in to houses to get car keys and committing robberies to get cars."

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 “Our role is to intercept the cars, whether they be stolen vehicles or ones the offenders are using to travel to commit these crimes, and get them locked up.

“It’s a lucrative business - although I don’t like using that word - it’s crime. They are breaking into a house, taking a £40,000 car, and they might only get £1,000 to £1,500 for it. But if they do two or three a night it’s big money to be had for them.”

A radio message comes in saying the Mazda we are chasing has been abandoned near a block of flats.

We find it with the engine still running, the doors open.

The crooks have fled. But when Sgt Kabal flips open the boot, inside are six pillow cases - swag bags - for what would have been a night of thieving, and misery for their victims.

The Mazda had been stolen in a burglary in Salford and was on cloned plates.

A minute later we are made aware of another pursuit taking place nearby and Sgt Kabal is back behind the wheel.

Two suspected burglars in a stolen Citroen have tried to shake off one of the TVIU team by speeding up a farm track next to Bredbury Hall.

The tactic failed. In desperation, the Citroen has turned left into a field and a quagmire. The suspects get stuck in the mud.

One  is handcuffed to the stolen car and will need extensive plastic surgery after a police dog was used to help take him down. A second suspect gets further away, but is arrested on the edge of the field soon after.

The threat posed by burglars is escalating.

If during a house raid, the opportunity to steal a high-performance car arises, thieves will take it. But increasingly, thieves are prepared to use extreme threats and violence in order to get keys to prestige cars.

Gunpoint carjackings and masked gangs breaking into family homes armed with machetes have occurred as well as sophisticated and silent methods to steal 'keyless' cars.

The lucrative nature of the crime has fuelled an huge increase in car theft across Greater Manchester. The number of cars stolen in the region has gone up from 6,428 in 2014 to 10, 040 last year - or 27 cars a day.

Between June last year and January 2019 the Tactical Vehicle Intercept Unit recovered 273 cars worth £6.3m, plus £189,650 in cash and £52,400 worth of drugs.

 Now, Greater Manchester Police has launched Operation Dynamo to target organised crime gangs making millions of pounds from stealing cars and associated crimes.

“It is very organised, and we are at the start of this trail, dealing with the burglars", Sgt Kabal says.  "Once they are taken there are a number of routes for the vehicles.

"A fair percentage are nicked to be used in other crimes - a high powered German car -  a Golf R or an Audi S3 or , or 4x4. They might want to do a ram raid or need a decent get away car.

“Other cars are stolen to order. That might be a rare car or high performance one, say a BMW M4 or Audi RS6. An order might go in for one them to be shipped out to the continent.

“Also a lot of cars are stolen for parts. Wing mirrors, gear sticks, you name it, they will put a car in a thousand parts. They are broken up in what we call chop shops - it could be a lock up, which they only use for a short period of time.

“We had a Mercedes which was stolen and within two hours it was ripped down, door linings taken out, everything, it was unrecognisable, like Meccano, it was dismantled.

"It then goes on sale on internet based sale sites, like eBay. Some sites you can see a whole car for sale. The same seller will have the bonnet, the wings, the seats.

“For a high end BMW, the retailer might charge £5,000 to repair a car,  with stolen parts they can do it for £2,000 cash.”

My shift with Greater Manchester's elite police drivers started with an 8pm briefing. The officers were  told of a Golf linked to an organised crime gang and locations it has been; an Audi has been stolen and there are other vehicles on false plates.

Officers are frank about what they are dealing with. One says: “Bury is getting hammered,” and explains that vehicles are being taken from the attractive north end of the borough, in Greenmount, and Ramsbottom.

“One woman had her Land Rover Discovery taken twice in two weeks. It had a tracker fixed to it and was recovered, only to be taken again.

“In one 72 hour period recently from 5pm on Friday over the weekend there were 88 vehicles stolen in Greater Manchester.

“We are scratching the surface, but we are the last proactive unit in the force, we go where we are needed.”

The first response of the night had been to reports of car being driven at 100 mph on the M60 in the wake of a domestic dispute in which a woman was stabbed in the hand, before a police vehicle was rammed, in Trafford.

In the space of nine minutes Sgt Kabal had moved from Openshaw to Cheshire, doing 150 mph on the M60 and M56. In the end a suspect was tasered in a pub  car park by a Cheshire officer.

Midnight finds the team gathered in a half circle, clutching plastic cups in the rain and cold, fifty yards from the neon glare of McDonald's at Gorton, a 'half time team talk' being delivered by Det Sgt Danny Kabal.

Parked behind us are the tools of the team's trade, a small fleet of Audi S3s, Golf Rs, and a three litre BMW.

"We are all passionate about it, we all feel the same," he says.

He's right. You can actually sense their bristling desire to corner and catch dangerous criminals. Back on the hunt, we head at 100mph down Ashton Old Road. 

My fascination at Det Sgt Kabal’s determination to get his man, and his astonishing driving skills, helps my natural fear recede.

An Audi which is on the team’s radar flashes past us as at Portwood roundabout in Stockport. 

Within seconds we are behind it doing 100mph on the M60. The target exits the motorway and then, at 80 mph, without braking, jumps a red light on the wrong side of the road.

Sgt Kabal and another of the unit’s vehicles ahead of us terminate the pursuit moments later, as we head into residential streets. 

It was an example of how professionalism has to come first, ahead of any adrenalin-fuelled need to arrest. 

“The Audi had sped off from one of our vehicles as it got close", Sgt Kabal says. "A check had revealed it wasn’t taxed, it wasn’t insured, but there was no intelligence to say it was being used in burglaries. We were right behind it, but the level of risk it was being driven at started to increase. 

“On the motorway it is fine. There was no reckless swerving across the road, so we were happy to run with it. They could have committed a bad crime or been going to commit something. But with experience and training you get a feel for it, and you know when its not quite right."

The final shout of the night is an alert for a stolen Ford which has been an irritant all night. There have been sightings in Cheetham Hill and elsewhere. But now specific intelligence comes in. It is on Rochdale Road in Collyhurst. Five minutes after the call we are near The Fort shopping complex at Cheetham Hill. 

The Ford has been seen in Shudehill and it looks like we are about to trap it with several cars from the unit responding. 

But then again the brakes are put on. The Ford is in the Northern Quarter. “There are too many people about there, even in the early hours, for us to track a car at speed", Sgt Kabal says.

Even though a fellow officer admits that, compared to the volume of car theft in Greater Manchester, the unit are 'chipping away at an iceberg' the unit’s existence is essential. Burglars taken by the team are the foot soldiers for the generals of organised crime which Operation Dynamo is after.

There are many links in the chain.

A 'chop shop' recently discovered in Oldham was found to have parts from 80 stolen vehicles.

In another case a juggernaut had two shabby Transit vans  inside it. But, Russian doll like, inside the vans were shrink-wrapped Audi parts loaded to the roof. The truck was bound for Poland.

Once south Manchester and Stockport were notable hotspots for car thefts, and they remain so, but it is now a regional wide issue.

The force has prioritised the fight against car theft as public alarm about the crime is reflected on community websites almost daily.

One appalling tragedy gave GMP's command team food for thought.

The shocking murder of former Royal Navy officer Mike Samwell, 35, in April, 2017 demonstrated what can happen. He was mown down and killed when he tried to stop burglars taking his £35,000 Audi S3 in Chorlton.

Burglar Ryan Gibbons will serve a minimum of 27 years for Mr Samwell's murder.

Figures for car theft in the region show a continual rise. In 2014 6,428 vehicles were taken; 2015, 7,048; 2016, 7,605; 2017, 9,713; 2018, 10,040.

Supt Mark Dexter, of GMP's  Special Operations Branch, says: "If you go back to the late 80s, early 90s, car crime was built around joyriding, so they were stealing cars that were easy to get into. There was some development of them being used in ram raids. 

"But what we have seen now is a shift towards targeting the higher end German vehicle market, because the demand for them is significant.

By catching them (the burglars) we can develop intelligence....trying to understand what their links are and where those vehicles are going, and that's where we have not been as scientific as we could have been.

"What we seen now, nationally, is that a lot of this criminality is underpinning organised crime. This money is going somewhere, so a £20,000 Audi, A4 you might get £24,000 worth of parts on eBay, so where is that money going? Dynamo is aiming to get underneath.

"We only recover about 40 per cent of the cars that get stolen. So 60 per cent go to chop shops or in containers, going abroad.

Thirty per cent of cars go in burglaries. There is a perception out there in the general public that its vehicle crime. It is not, it is organised criminality, and on occasions , it's your house that they are coming into, and the impact on victims is not truly understood.

"It can be life-changing, certainly if there is confrontation in a house - it might result in someone moving house.

"The other issue is what regulation is there around car parts supply. if you can buy a door for an Audi Quattro on eBay, what regulation have we got around that? That's a debate we need to open up.

"We can go to car manufacturers and ask them to improve security on vehicles, but what that does is drive people into confrontation with burglars. Keyless technology has just resulted in them finding a way to get round it, with transmitters on the wall of houses."

Supt Dexter concedes that the fight is being hampered by huge reductions in the force's budget.

"We have had to take cuts like other departments. The force has lost around 2,000 staff in the last few years. Is it frustrating? Of course it is", he says.

"We recognise we have to be more efficient, we have had to do more with less."

"The tactics that the TVIU use are quite blunt tools to solve the problem, we need to get underneath the problem. Metal theft was a big issue a few years ago, and the regulation put in place for scrap metal merchants, help stop that. We need to follow the same model for car parts."

The force hope that Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, will, with Crime Commissioners around the country, add political weight to their call for new legislation.

"The big thing on this will be making it less attractive to do it, because there is clearly too much money in it.

"When you introduce regulation on sites like eBay and auction sites, that's when you start to have an impact. There is no doubt that money made from this will be funding other crime, like drugs supply."