THAT bone-crunching handshake lets you know that if Michael Todd ever felt your collar, you would know about it. At 45, he is still nimble on his feet, as you would expect of someone who used to turn out for Essex police rugby and football teams, and who still finds the odd hour for the gym in a working day which begins at 6.45am and finishes "whenever". As he straightens up his 6ft 2in frame and smoothes down his modern-looking Greater Manchester Police uniform, he looks every inch the proud beat bobby, until you look at his epaulettes and spot the insignia which tell you that this is the Chief Constable.
"I could wear plain clothes all the time now but I choose not to," he says. "As a young PC, I remember thinking why do the senior officers not wear uniform - is it that they are ashamed of being a police officer?"
Coppers in Greater Manchester will surely be wondering what changes their new chief will bring. He ruffled feathers, for instance, when, as Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, he took 350 traffic officers off usual duties and told them instead to concentrate on muggings and robberies.
"It would be naïve to think it was without cost. There was resistance from some," says Todd of his Operation Safer Streets strategy. "But we said `What is important here - is it some of the minor traffic legislation or is it stopping people getting robbed on the street?'
"We had had one or two high-profile cases, like a girl who was shot in the head for her mobile phone in east London. It makes you say we cannot allow this to go on."
Several months into Operation Safer Streets, street crime in London has fallen by almost a third. Meanwhile, the operation's architect is today settling into the Chief Constable's chair at Greater Manchester Police headquarters in Stretford.
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