Middlesbrough Mayor Chris Cooke said today it had been ‘very tough’ for the town to be in the spotlight but said police are ‘doing a sterling job’ and denied the town was ‘lawless’.
It follows a week of escalating violence thought to be linked to a gangland war between two factions of a local organised crime group, with police previously resorting to surveillance tactics employed in Northern Ireland.
PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough were killed along with five youths in a head-on crash last Saturday, after the car the group were in went the wrong way on the A66 and
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