Police in Bolton have vowed a hard crackdown on crime and to take a lump out of this with a "whack-a-mole" strategy.

Officers addressed a gathering in Farnworth recently where they vowed to make improvements.

The Police and Communities Together (PACT) meeting was attended by Police Sergeant Craig Wallace and Police Inspector Helen Atherton.

Sergeant Wallace vowed to be more proactive going forward.

He said: “My feeling is 10 per cent of society are using up 90 per cent of services.

“We need to take a lump out of that by playing whack a mole, then we get into real policing.

“‘I don’t want to be coming to your door saying, 'I’m sorry you have been burgled', I want to be intercepting the burglar at 3am.”

He added: “The team you have got in front of you are the new guard for this area.

“Last night we stop and searched eight under eight year olds on suspicion of being in possession of a weapon.”

He said this had taken place at Farnworth Bus Station.

A member of the public in attendance challenged the officers over what the point was in ringing the police if calls were not answered.

Inspector Atherton acknowledged this was a difficulty. She said: “Contacting the police does continue to be hard work. We definitely have improved.”

She said that there were multiple levels of calls to police.

The most serious is a grade one, which meant police would have to be there within 15 minutes.

The meeting was told the HMRC report published in March showed inbound calls to GMP were now being answered within 25 seconds, which was down 50 per cent compared to July 2021.

101 calls were being answered at an average rate of three minutes and 47 seconds, which was down eight minutes compared to July last year.

Inspector Atherton assured the meeting there had been further reductions since then and the meeting was also told call handlers were being recruited into the force.