The latest phase of the crackdown, dubbed Operation Trivium 3, runs next week (20th-24th October) and will see police officers across England and Wales use various means of intelligence, including automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), to identify and stop criminal operations.

Officers will have immediate access to intelligence sharing and translation services via the operations centre at West Midlands Police in Birmingham.

TISPOL, the European Police Traffic Network, also says the campaign will also see observers from the police forces of Belgium, Denmark, Latvia, Ireland, Italy, Finland, Spain and other countries will join colleagues from Lithuania, Poland and Romania at work with West Midlands officers during the operation.

Central to the operation is Europol, whose officers will be collecting and sharing the best possible intelligence on known criminal individuals and gangs.

Supt Paul Keasey of West Midlands Police explained: ‘Many European Member States, including the UK, have been affected by high levels of crimes committed by members of organised mobile criminal networks. Trivium 3, like the two previous Trivium operations, focuses on identifying and dismantling criminal groups responsible for crimes such as illegal immigration and human trafficking, firearms offences, fraud, metal theft, robberies, drugs related crimes and many other offences. In particular, we will be seeking networks with operational networks across borders, as these represent serious harm to some of the most vulnerable people in society, as well as to the communities and businesses they target.

‘It can be challenging for regional or national police forces to detect the criminal groups due to the groups' transnational mobility. While a local police force is still trying to establish the circumstances of an offence, the group can already be active in a completely different region or country, and the core members of the group are comparatively safe in another country.

‘Trivium 3 will share intelligence to tackle organised criminality, to bring its perpetrators to justice and to make Europe’s roads safer and more secure.’