“No weapons recovered” during weekend of stop and search in the town centre

The police inspector for Wrexham town centre has said “no weapons were recovered” during a weekend of stop and search.

The “robust approach” was introduced following a recent spate of high profile incidents including a man allegedly being stabbed in the neck on the High Street, a town centre robbery where the offender was in ‘possession of a knife’ and in incident in Penybryn which resulted in two men receiving ‘superficial’ injuries.

On Saturday it was confirmed that a man had been charged with assault and possession of a bladed article following the incident on High Street.

Wrexham town inspector Luke Hughes said: “I took the decision on Friday and Saturday night that the intelligence supported the authorisation of a Section 60 search area, an unusual step, rarely used locally.

“This effectively removes the need for officers to form grounds and ultimately allows indiscriminate use of stop search in a designated area.

“I can say that as a result of the authorisation we stopped a significant number of individuals and all were searched, one having a small amount of drugs and one who didn’t fancy complying and was arrested for obstruction, all the rest were negative.”

“I am pleased to say that no weapons were recovered.”

Seven arrests were made over the weekend for public order and drunkenness, which Inspector Hughes said is a “higher than average amount as discretion was less prevalent following some of the violent incidents we have seen last week.”

He added: “I personally feel that this approach was proportionate; we have confirmed my view that we don’t have a culture of routine weapon carrying.

“Also note that when offences are committed, as sadly they were last week, that we have made arrests in all cases and those persons detained have either been charged and bailed to court or remanded straight into custody.

“I accept that these incidents may have affected public confidence and perception, and social media speculation and comments at times are less than helpful. However the reality is that we have had a small minority of violent thugs who thought that carrying or using a weapon was acceptable… it’s not, their attitude is not and the only place they deserve to be is in prison.

“I would also like to thank the public for their overwhelming support in recent days as it is clear public opinion is behind our current hard line approach.”