"Flying squad" corruption (under)exposed
01 May 2003
In June "Operation Ethiopia", an inquiry into some of the most serious instances of police corruption among a group of elite Flying Squad officers since the 1970s, resulted in five police officers being jailed for up to seven years.
In 1998, at the launch of the investigation, Metropolitan chief constable Paul Condon had told a Commons Select Committee that his London-based force could have as many as 250 corrupt police officers. The convictions resulted from a series of raids by the Metropolitan police's internal investigation squad (CIB3), based on evidence from Detective Constable Kevin Garner, who turned supergrass after his conviction for 14 offences of corruption, theft and burglary (see Statewatch vol 8 no 1 and 3).
The Flying squad was formed in 1919 to investigate serious crimes in the capital, such as armed robbery. It was the first police unit to extensively use undercover police officers and employed a controversial "supergrass" system, whereby criminals received a reduced sentence in return for providing information on their colleagues. By the 1970s the squad's close proximity to the criminal underworld led to proven instances of corruption and in 1976 its commander, Kenneth Drury, was jailed for eight years.
His conviction led to the launch of "Operation Countryman" which resulted in nearly 500 officers leaving the police service. However, less than 80 were formerly dealt with through criminal or disciplinary action and only two officers were convicted of any offence.
While "Operation Countryman" was a landmark investigation, exposing the depth of corruption that in elite police units, its failure to secure convictions against all but a handful of officers became a template for later investigations. The extent of the problem was noted by former Metropolitan Commissioner Paul Condon when, in 1998, he informed a Commons Select Committee that his London-based force had up to 250 corrupt police officers. He expressed concern that some were delaying or escaping punishment, (a new expression, "the golden backache", entered the vocabulary, to describe corrupt police officers who retired on medical grounds rather than face prosecution). A dozen detectives from the Flying Squad had already been charged at the time of his comments and nearly 59 suspended.
The new convictions stem from the 1998 trial of three Flying Squad police officers, Kevin Garner, Terence McGuinness and Keith Green. The officers had been put under surveillance by the police anti-corruption (CIB3) from 1995 following a tip off from within the Metropolitan police. They were arrested as part of "Operation Dubai", a "sting" in which cannabis was marked and deposited in a flat that had both audio and video surveillance; the three men were recorded stealing the cannabis. At their trial Green was acquitted by the jury after he denied any knowledge of or intention to take part in a burglary, (he had already retired from the force on the grounds of "ill-health"). Garner pleaded guilty to 14 offences between 1992 and 1997, including conspiracy to rob, handling stolen cash, perverting the course of justice and handling a stolen car. McGuinness pleaded guilty to burglary and conspiring to steal, handling stolen cash and perverting the course of justice. Rather than face prison sentences the men decided to cooperate with CIB investigators and were moved to safe houses and assigned police minders. The two men accused around seventy Flying Squad officers of corruption. McGuinness was later dropped as a witness.
A number of CIB undercover operations followed, resulting in a number unsuccessful prosecutions of police officers. In May 1999 suspended detectives John Redgrave and Michael Charman were charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and breaches of the Official Secrets Act after an entrapment operation. The officers were cleared in the December after a magistrate refused to commit the case for trial. This led to an