By Thursday evening, Piccadilly Gardens was back to its usual self.
Delivery drivers whizzed around on e-bikes, then congregated opposite McDonald's to wait for orders. Street drinkers sat under the canopy of the bus station, making conversation and watching the drizzle. Homeless people were leant against bins, asking for change as thousands streamed past them.
No police were visible at the time, and the usual low-level street drug dealing was taking place near the Queen Victoria statue.
READ MORE: Get the latest on Manchester city centre here.
But 36 hours previously, things were very different. Some 20 police officers — including plain clothes and uniformed GMP cops, British Transport Police, mounted units, and a dog handler — were on the Project Servator high-visibility patrol in the city centre on Wednesday (September 20). Primarily, it was a show of strength to act as a warning to would-be terrorists.
It's thought a terror attack in Manchester city centre could come from a vehicle targeting pedestrians, as has been seen in other European cities. Servator, therefore, is an exercise is 'disrupting' the possible 'hostile reconnaissance' required by terrorists to carry out such an attack.
Wednesday's action was timely, with several high-profile events coming up in autumn, like the Conservative Party Conference, Manchester half marathon, and Christmas Markets.
“We do these based on [location] sites, and we also do them for events," Inspector Jon Middleton, GMP's tactical lead for the project, said as the M.E.N. shadowed Wednesday's operation.
"This one is a balancing act between location and the Conservative Party Conference, Christmas Markets, Remembrance Sunday, and it’s a regular protest site - plus it’s the half-marathon soon. We also looked at concerts and football matches.”
However, Servator is not just about making Manchester ready for any acts of evil, or solely about building a relationship with the staff members, homeless, and delivery riders in Piccadilly Gardens who GMP want to act as their eyes and ears. No, Servator also seeks to catch out lower-level offenders by executing stop-and-searches.
Jon, a tall, imposing figure, moved about the city centre with affability. He stopped and chatted to tourists from Beijing, rough sleepers, and office workers commuting into town - part of his 'recruitment drive' for 'extra eyes' so they 'report suspicious packages and suspicious people and phone it in'.
Within an hour of the 9am start, his officers had nabbed a result. A homeless man was picked up by a plain clothes officer and stopped and searched by uniformed colleagues on Oldham Street in the Northern Quarter.
On him, they found a quantity of drugs, a balaclava, and a lock knife. In the end, the 38-year-old was the only arrest made on Wednesday, held on suspicion of being in possession of a bladed article and possession of a Class B substance. Four stop searches were carried out in total during the morning's action.
To find such a weapon is nothing new, Jon added. “The things we find vary from a lock knife or a kitchen knife brought from home to machetes and improvised weapons,” he went on. “I would say this can be worryingly frequent. We have certainly not done more than a handful of stop and searches and it’s concerning.”
Servator is first-and-foremost about 'engagement', Jon insisted. That's a policy which homeless people in the area seemed to support the following day.
"It should be the case of having a conversation rather than saying get up and PNC-ing you," Del, a homeless woman sat by Halifax bank, said. The 35-year-old has been sleeping rough for a while. She has been in and out of temporary accommodation in north Manchester for some years, and is known to people in the area, having lost her home in 2018.
Del's seen the area change in that time. "I am seeing new faces," she reflected. "There’s more people out here now compared to two years ago."
Her experience tallies with homeless workers in the city centre on the opposite side of the problem. On Monday (September 18), Barnabus staff said numbers of rough sleepers coming to their doors have jumped by 90 percent since early 2022.
28 people per month were using the service 18 months ago. In July, 54 did. That Monday, eight new rough sleepers turned up at the door asking for breakfast.
CEO Yvonne Hope is braced for a tough winter — much like last year. “I think it’s going to be the same again,” she sighed. “We get 18 to 20 people and up to eight of them now are brand new every breakfast.”
It means that, as officers gear up for a busy autumn, the most vulnerable people in Piccadilly Gardens are dreading winter.
