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Last night saw Hammersmith flooded with police officers as an operation to tackle knife crime, drugs and fraud on the London Underground took off.

So if you were in the area you might have noticed an abnormal number of police officers at the Tube and bus station.

Teams from the British Transport Police and the Metropolitan Police were there, working alongside Transport for London staff and revenue inspectors.

The reason?

Because police are striving to be proactive in dealing with violent crime.

With yet another fatal stabbing over in Ilford the night before the operation, it seemed like as good a time as any to launch Operation Getting Better.

(Image: David Nathan)

Operation Getting Better

The operation that MyLondon joined to observe on Wednesday (November 20), was "not to deal with ticket irregularities, but to assist the revenue teams and step in proactively if and when they get challenged from alleged fare evaders and take control of the situation before it escalates," as operation leader PC Peter Apostoli explained.

PC Apostoli, from the BTP, addressed a team of officers who would accompany him along with Met Police officers before they all went out to patrol Hammersmith station.

He explained: "Our main focus at the moment is knife crime, it's why we're focusing these ops.

(Image: David Nathan)

"And if we have got the grounds tonight we will be searching people because, at the end of the day, there was another stabbing over at Ilford and it's sent our figures over a ten-year high for stabbings in London.

"So that's one of the reasons we're doing this tonight."

Officers would also be on the look out for people carrying any other offensive weapons or those carrying drugs.

They were tasked with stepping in "proactively" when someone had been pulled over by a revenue inspector.

How did the operation work?

(Image: David Nathan)

PC Apostoli explained how, even though they are "20 per cent" less as a force, they are "more intelligence-led now" and pushing to always "put people in the right places".

The operation came to be because of intelligence that Hammersmith as a station was particularly bad when it came to people allegedly hanging around and carrying something illegal or causing trouble.

"We're working alongside the Met and TfL and we're there tonight to prevent affray and abusive behaviour, especially towards our colleagues on TfL and Revenue inspectors," PC Apostoli said.

He instructed the other officers to "have a look for 'turn-backs'. There will be people coming up and they'll turn back round because they haven't got a ticket.

"But in our experience, they may not only be turning back because they don't have a ticket, they might be turning back because they're carrying something, perhaps an object or drugs.

"So we use proactivity and professionalism to see why they've turned back, if it's not just because they don't have a ticket."

Inside the operation

All officers set off to their stations at 6pm and the operation was due to last until 9pm.

The team wanted some young people, maybe even schoolchildren, to still be around when the operation was going on, in case there were any suspected crimes among them.

It was absolutely fascinating to watch the police at work as they monitored members of the public going in and out of the barriers, or waiting for buses.

While the nature of what they were doing did mean that, sometimes, they stopped someone who could prove they had paid correctly, they often stopped people that hadn't.

(Image: David Nathan)

This would then become problematic in some cases because people would refuse to give their actual names or reveal their real identities.

If an individual is caught not paying properly, they would usually face a fine. So when someone refuses to share their identity this becomes problematic because they then cannot be charged.

We noticed it took a fair bit of time for police to deal with these individuals, who sometimes got angry. We saw multiple cases of this across the night, and there would have been more at other station entrances while we weren't there.

One more difficult example was a group of younger children, who looked to be in their very early teens, who had either paid incorrectly or maybe not paid at all.

Police have to deal with this group differently than they might deal with an adult, so it's all about adapting.

While nothing really kicked off on this particular operation, there is every potential this could happen.

(Image: David Nathan)

When someone is stopped by police they may panic, especially if they are carrying something illegal.

Hence the objective of the operation.

And only a couple of months previously this exact issue had arisen.

PC Apostoli had said: "We can often tell members of the public that are going to give false details, so let's step in early in these scenarios.

"Be mindful of the inspectors tonight because a few months ago, even though it wasn't our team, there was a revenue operation across the road the police were at, and the guy they were dealing with was a semi-pro boxer and he knocked out the revenue inspector.

"The last thing we want is someone to get assaulted tonight while we're all there, when there's so many police officers."

As the operation wrapped up, police officers were able to return without any major incidents having kicked off.

But it wasn't about that. The operation was about being an obvious police presence, and showing members of the public that fare dodging or carrying anything illegal will not be tolerated on London's transport network or its streets.

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It was also about the police being there as support for TfL staff, who are often subject to abuse from customers, and to protect the general public.

It was fantastic to see the public interacting with police officers so openly. And to watch officers deal with individual situations - because every case is different.

The British Transport Police are keen to spread encouragement to always let them know if you see or experience anything you're unsure about on London's transport network.

You can report a crime by texting 61016, even while you're still on the bus or train it's happening on.