Merseyside Police defended its tactics at tackling gun and gang crime yesterday. Assistant Chief Constable Simon Byrne said that the force had more than 200 officers fighting armed gangs and criminals and that 5,500 arrests had been made by the team.

“To put that into context, we’re executing firearms search warrants every two days and, on average, executing drug search warrants every three days,” he said.

There had been a “significant increase” in the number of arrests made across the force. “We are confident that our policing approach has given some real success, notwithstanding this tragic incident,” he added.

He said that 11 firearms had been seized in the past two weeks and 50 in the past year. The team had also seized nearly £1.5 million of criminal cash and 114kg of class A drugs. Eleven people had been jailed for firearms offences in the past six months, dealing Merseyside’s gangs a severe blow.

Speaking about various bosses who run the gangs, Mr Byrne said: “These people are by no means untouchables,” adding that there were visible and covert operations to bring them to justice. “These people work by different rules and have their own hierarchy based on fear in the criminal gang and people carry out varying roles within them,” he said.

In the Croxteth Crew there was a 42-year-old member along with ten others, three of whom were only 16, and one of the same group’s three leaders was aged 22.

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