How the shooting of a dog triggered a lockdown crackdown on Salford's gangsters

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

It started with the shooting of a dog. Three masked men walked up to a house in Pendleton and knocked on the door. When the owner answered it one of the men fired a gun into the premises.

A Patterdale terrier was hit by gunshot shrapnel, but survived. Just over a month later, in April, in what is believed to be an escalation of the same dispute, two men were shot in the Kersal district of the city, escaping without life-threatening injury.

Those incidents, and a bomb attack which preceded them, were the catalyst for what could be a game changer in how police dismantle and tame armed organised crime gangs in Salford.

Within a few days of the two men being shot, Detective Chief Inspector Rick Thompson, previously part of the GMP gangbusting