Chief Constable Stephen Watson has mounted a robust defence of police stop and search powers - and vowed they would be used far more in the future.
The force ramped up its use of 'stop and search' following the fatal stabbing of three young men in Greater Manchester in just 16 days.
It gives police powers to search someone if there are 'reasonable grounds' to believe they have illegal drugs, a weapon, stolen goods or items like a crowbar which would be used to commit a crime.
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But Greater Manchester Police went further and also made a so-called 'section 60' order which allowed officers, for a limited time in a small area, to search people even without reasonable grounds for suspicion.
The move came following the fatal stabbings of Kennie Carter, 16, in Stretford, Alan Szelugowski, 17, in Clowes Park, Salford, and Dylan Keelan, 20, in Dukinfield.
The deaths prompted a string of arrests, with some of those detained as young as 13.
The latest figures available show that GMP has used stop and search powers far less frequently than other forces.
The force carried out 11,748 stop-searches in the year to March 2021 compared to 25,800 by West Midlands Police, the force with which GMP is most frequently compared, according to government figures.
Because of long-standing problems with GMP's new computer system, iOPS, no comparable figure for the year before has been released.
The power is controversial as the figures consistently show white people are far less likely to be stop-searched than black, Asian or mixed heritage people.
In a Q&A on BBC Radio Manchester today (Tuesday), Chief Constable Stephen Watson promised the force would be using far more stop and search.
The top cop, who was installed last year after Ian Hopkins was forced out of the role by Mayor Andy Burnham when it emerged GMP had failed to record an estimated 80,000 crimes in one year, accepted stop and search on its own was 'not the answer'.
He said: "What is required, of course, is more profound stuff. Now there's a lot of work going on around (GMP's) violence reduction unit. These are things that are paid for by central government and commissioned through the mayor's office.
"These are things when you are getting into education and into the root causes of how people come to behave in this way. And those are the things that frankly make a difference.
"What I'm really keen to make sure is that in the here and now, whilst these longer term initiatives have time to work through, we're still doing something really actively."
He said when he landed the job he promised more people would be arrested and he said 'in some guises' the arrest figure had risen 41 per cent.
"And we are stopping and searching more people and we are going to increase those numbers. I do want us to be very much more interactive and more proactive," he said.
He said the 'public health approach' adopted, apparently successfully, by Glasgow, where schools, social services and the health authorities joined the police in tackling the causes of crime, were 'underpinning' the work currently being undertaken by the force's violence reduction unit.
The chief constable said that intervention with children as young as three was 'absolutely essential'.
He said: "If that doesn't happen, by that time you get people who are willing literally to plunge a knife into another human being aged 17, they are almost lost, lost to themselves and they are almost lost to society.
"Candidly, what we have to do is balance that longer term stuff that really works verses the short term stuff which is to say whatever's gone on in the past with people's lives, if you are carrying knives and have a propensity to violence, we have a job to get between you and the public.
"And that's what we increasingly intend to do."
Presented with analysis which revealed no knives had been seized in more than 103 searches on January 5 and 6 when GMP used section 60 powers, Mr Watson insisted that generally routine stop-searches uncovered illegal items such as knives between 25 and 30 per cent of the times it was deployed.
He added: "But what is unknown is 'what is the deterrent effect?' It seems to me it is absolutely blindlingly obvious in Greater Manchester we just have not been conducting stop and searches in anything like the volume commensurate with a force our size.
"And as a result, I think there are people wandering around with this false sense of impunity that nobody is actually going to interdict them, and we've got to turn that dynamic.
"So it isn't the whole answer but it's got to be such that we raise the risk that if you are carrying a knife that there's a better chance that you will be found out with it. Of course, carrying knives carries a huge consequence for people. We understand that. These are in the majority frankly young people who we don't want to criminalise.
"But if you carry a knife and you are caught you will get a criminal record which will sit with you for the rest of your life."
Mr Watson trumpeted 438 new officers who will be recruited by GMP - which remains in 'special measures' - this year as part of his 'back to basics' plan, but he accepted there were still areas where the force wasn't good enough.
He admitted GMP had 'just not got this right' following criticism that police appeared to be ignoring open drug dealing in Piccadilly Gardens.
He told the radio phone-in: "There are too many people who fear the area. It's frankly looking a bit grotty. It's frankly not a great advertisement for the city and clearly people think then can wander into Piccadilly Gardens and sell drugs and do what they want, and that cannot be right."
