The people – and dogs – cracking down on organised crime

PD Bonnie is part of the team that executed warrants in Northampton

Last month, a series of raids took place in Northampton as part of wider crackdown on organised crime. What happened?

It's about 07:30 BST on a crisp October morning outside police headquarters in Northampton.

West Northamptonshire Council's trading standards team are about to embark on a three-day operation, and they have invited me along to observe.

Their target is organised crime groups who use communities to raise funds for criminal activities in plain sight.

They are being joined by officers from Northamptonshire Police, the county's fire service, Immigration Enforcement and housing enforcement officers.

The action is part of the national Operation Machinize, focusing on money laundering, immigration crime and the criminal use of cash-intensive businesses.

By the conclusion of the raids, officers will have seized illegal tobacco, cigarettes and vapes from three shops on the edges of the town centre.

Sgt Chris Monday with specialist dog PD Bonnie she specialises in finding items including drugs, cash and firearms.

We travel in convoy to a car park a few streets away from a shop that is of interest to the team.

The police are leading and have gone ahead to secure the property,

I wait with the team of three trading standards officers and a dog handler from a private company brought in to help.

One of the group is fairly new to the team, and there is some good-natured joking about how clean her boots are as we wait for the signal from the police.

Soon they confirm that it is safe to approach and we travel a short distance to a narrow terraced street with cars parked either side and a few police cars there.

It is quiet and calm as the search begins of the shop, the flat above and three vans parked outside.

But when officers discover one of the vans is locked and they cannot get in, the quiet is pierced by the sound of a power tool.

A few minutes later, officers are inside the van, where they discover two black holdalls and a brown cardboard box containing illegal cigarettes and tobacco.

The trading standards team quickly get to work, counting and logging all of these and sealing them in bags.

As the search continues inside, officers discover that the whole of the wooden staircase leading up to the flat is on hinges, but nothing illegal is found behind it.

Sgt Chris Monday, of Northamptonshire Police's dog section, has with him specialist search dog PD Bonnie, a four-year-old chocolate brown sprocker spaniel.

"She's going through the premises and any vehicles linked to the premises, looking for any hidden items," he explains.

Bonnie is trained to search on her own, Sgt Monday says.

"She will sniff out the scent of drugs, cash or firearms, and when she finds that scent, she will zero down on it and freeze and show me exactly where it is."

"She's a wonderful little dog. She's had many great finds over the years. She's very good at what she does."

West Northamptonshire Trading Standards going through the illegal cigarettes and tobacco found in one of the vans

Here at this shop on Spencer Bridge Road, officers seize more than £900 in cash, alongside 943 packs of cigarettes and 37 packets of tobacco.

Three white vans associated to the business are also seized.

Nick Lenton, Trading Standards manager at the council, explains: "It's illegal tobacco but it also links to underage sales, so children and young people are getting their hands on these.

"There's other linked criminality with this type of product, including modern slavery, human trafficking and money laundering.

"Some of the products are counterfeit, so there's no telling what ingredients are in those, and some don't pass the stringent safety tests that we have in England.

"They have been linked to fatal house fires... where the cigarettes haven't self- extinguished."

Paul Mitchinson travels all over the country assisting police and trading standards on the hunt for illegal cigarettes and vapes

Working alongside Bonnie are George and Pip, a cocker spaniel and a springer spaniel.

Both are specialist search dogs, trained to find illegal cigarettes and vapes.

They have been brought along by dog handler Paul Mitchinson of the firm Nose Knows K9, hired for the operation.

He explains that it was not only illegal cigarettes and tobacco that were found.

Officers also discovered "a hide inside the shop, in the toilet, but there was nothing in it", he says.

"It was very well constructed, made of wood and metal with two hydraulic rams, so it was specifically made for hiding cigarettes and vapes."

The people buying and smoking such cigarettes, he says, "haven't a clue" what's in them.

"They might be £5 a packet, which is a lot cheaper than ordinary cigarettes, but would you put something in your body that you don't know what's in it?

"And then you've got the other side of it, with modern slavery. There's a massive, bigger picture; it's not just the sale of cheap cigarettes."

No arrests were made as a result of the operation.

George and Pip get a reward of playing with a ball after all their hard work searching for illegal cigarettes and vapes