THE officer running Operation Steerside has praised the Telegraph & Argus’s “invaluable” Stop the Danger Drivers campaign for helping to make the police operation a success.

Sergeant Cameron Buchan was commenting on the importance of the regional press as part of Local Newspaper Week, which celebrates the role of local newspapers in their communities.

The Stop the Danger Drivers campaign has been nominated for the Making a Difference Award, which highlights the power of local newspapers to campaign for positive change in their communities.

Sergeant Buchan said: “Sometimes the public don’t know what the police are doing when they go about their daily lives at work or when they are asleep, but the police are always working in the background.

“The local press are our best way of letting the public know what we are doing, and we also get a lot back from it.

“When people know what we are working on we get more information coming back to us and it increases public confidence in us.

“Since the start of Operation Steerside we have had a steady stream of videos and information coming through from the public.

“Some of it we cannot do anything with because of a lack of evidence, but we always give feedback to contributors.

“It’s not very often a police campaign gets into the public consciousness the way this has.

“Steerside is a word people know about and approach officers asking if they are working on Steerside, we have councillors approaching us asking to be briefed, and in Halifax they are looking to set up something similar.

“The number of motorists caught in the operation currently stands at 9,233, and over the last 16 months the T&A’s campaign has been invaluable to us.”

Sgt Buchan has been awarded the Ian Broadhurst Trophy for Outstanding Contribution to Roads Policing for his work on Operation Steerside at the West Yorkshire Policing Awards 2017.

Stop the Danger Drivers is one of 28 local newspaper campaigns from across the UK nominated for the Making a Difference Award.

Voting is open until the end of tomorrow with the winner announced on Friday, To vote, visit localnewspaperweek.co.uk/Making-a-Difference. and click the Vote button.

MORE STOP THE DANGER DRIVERS STORIES