POLICE seized a quad bike as part of a special operation.

Officers in Johnson Fold, Hall i’ th’ Wood, Astley Bridge and Breightmet cracked down on key areas on Sunday afternoon, highlighted by information they had received from the public.

Joined by specialists from the Greater Manchester-wide Operation Camenca team, also slapped one off-road biker with a warning, while gathering further information for future operations.

The number of illegal motorcycles and quad bikes in the area was also visibly reduced during the five hours that officers were on site.

Inspector Nicola Williams, who organised the operation, urged residents to keep sending in information to allow officers to target their efforts effectively.

She said: “We were really pleased with it, myself and my colleagues, because we have worked hard with local people to find out who is doing what and where. I put a bid in to try and get the Operation Camenca team to come either on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday when it is at its’ worst and we had coverage in all of the areas highlighted so we were able to deter activity. We also spoke to quite a lot of local people yesterday so we have also generated quite a lot of intelligence for future operations.”

However, Inspector Williams was clear that the operations needed to continue in order to deal with the problem, she said: “I think we will see an initial decrease but it will be part of an ongoing battle.

“We have shown that we are there, we are doing something about it and we are not going to tolerate these off-road bikes.”

In the last three months more than 50 complaints had been made about off-road motorcycles, scooters and quad bikes. The intelligence helped officers pin down their efforts to areas like Longsight Park and Bolton Open Golf Club.

Inspector Williams said: “We want to keep working with people and ask them to continue providing us with intelligence by calling 101 or using the web portal if they see off-road bikers so we can send our resources to a specific location.”

Residents can also contact Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555111.