The City Centre Division
involves a completely different style of policing to most. Some kinds of
incident such as domestic disputes, children causing annoyance, or sudden
deaths are a rarity there, but a probationer posted there at the start of their
service couldn't possibly get a better grounding in public disorder, policing
major events, or arrests & custody office procedures than he will there.
This is Cross Street in Manchester, very near to the scene of the 1996 bombing,
but taken 15 years before...
On 15th June 1996, in the middle of Euro '96, an enormous explosion rocked the
heart of Manchester City Centre and ripped the middle of the shopping district
apart. Incredibly, nobody was killed, the Police on duty having been able to
evacuate the area in time, but over 200 people received varying degrees of
injury. Damage running into hundreds of millions of pounds was caused and a
feverish rebuilding program has been in place ever since to replace those
buildings destroyed by the explosion and to repair the hundreds of buildings
damaged.
Work on the initial stages of this redevelopment plan
are nearing completion in November 1999, and shortly the new Marks &
Spencer store, the largest in the world, will open to the public. Also
completed is Manchester first completely new street in 50 years, New Cathedral
Street. To facilitate the creation of this street, two complete Grade-1 listed
timber-frame pubs have been moved from their original location to a new one
next to the cathedral, in itself a mammouth undertaking.
The pictures on the right are taken from the
Rebuilding Manchester
website, and I am grateful to Euan Kellie for his permision to reproduce them
here. Note the post-box near to the centre of the Daily Mail picture. Against
all odds, given it's location only a few yards from the centre of the
explosion, this remained completely intact.
