South Wales Police (SWP) welcomes His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services’ (HMICFRS) findings of how the force responds to serious and organised crime (SOC).
The report has been published alongside the results of inspections of the Tarian Regional Organised Crime Unit (Tarian ROCU) and other forces in the Southern Wales region – Dyfed Powys Police and Gwent Police.
SOC includes crimes such as drug trafficking, fraud, cyber crime, child sexual abuse and exploitation as well as human trafficking. The consequences of such offences can be devastating.
The inspectorate graded SWP as ‘good’ at tackling SOC.
Assistant Chief Constable Tom Williams welcomed the independent scrutiny of its officers and procedures, to ensure the force is effectively tackling SOC.
He said: “The public must feel confident that South Wales Police is able to effectively detect and dismantle serious and organised crime in our communities, and I’m grateful for the independent scrutiny and feedback in this report.
“It is pleasing to see our grading, which outlined the force clearly prioritises tackling serious and organised crime, have strong structures in place to do so, and sufficient capacity and capability to tackle the issue.
“We have worked hard to ensure officers and staff across the force clearly understand SOC is a force priority, with a delivery plan in place to ensure we can protect our communities from criminality. Training to Lead Responsible Officers (LROs) at Detective Chief Inspector level and 70 Inspectors in neighbourhood policing teams has also been delivered to standardise and improve performance.
“Through increasing our intelligence capabilities through initiatives like Crimestoppers, we are proactively identifying new organised crime groups, with intelligence analysist on had to improve our understanding of the criminality and how to tackle them.
“Our work has resulted in 3,395 disruptions to serious and organised crime in the year ending 2025, an increase of almost 100% from the previous year.
“We will continue to work with our partners on disruption and enforcement, raise awareness of knife crime and encouraging young people to report, reducing harm associated with drugs, and using all available legislation, such as those which are available to Trading Standards to tackle issues such as money laundering and exploitation.”
The force has also been recognised for its adoption of Clear, Hold, Build projects, with further projects established since the inspection occurred. Following the implementation this in Butetown, Cardiff, in late 2024, more than 500 people have been arrested and 100 years of custodial sentences allocated so far. In Dyfatty, which launched early 2025, reported 28 arrests in the first two months, and five misuse-of-drug warrants executed.
Additionally, this week the force has seen six OCG members jailed for over 150 years for the murder of Joanne Penney in 2025. The force’s Major Crime team worked at length to lead an investigation that identified 12 people who have now been convicted in connection to the murder, highlighting the lengths we will go to in order to dismantle organised crime networks and ensure criminals face the full consequences of their actions.
ACC Williams added: “The communities of South Wales deserve to live in communities safe from serious and organised criminality, and I hope this report reassures them that we continue to work hard to ensure this is a reality.”
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