Between 2012 and 2022,
Line of Duty told the story
of AC-12, a fictional
anti-corruption unit that
famously went
after bent coppers.
But over 15 years prior
to that hitting our screens,
before that series was dreamt
up by its creator, Jed Mercurio,
a little-known unit of the
Met was being secretly set up
to crack the cycle of corruption
that had infiltrated the
country's biggest police force.
I was shocked.
Drug dealing, kidnap, armed
robbery being carried out by
police officers was
almost fiction, but it wasn't.
It was a reality.
Amid the scandals that
engulfed the early nineties,
a few brave senior police chiefs
decided a new tactic was needed.
This could be a film.
You couldn't make it up.
A tactic that would go after
those directly responsible
for the corruption to
catch them in the act.
Greed, ego, power. It's
all out there for grabs.
The fact that it was nicknamed
the Ghost Squad
sums it up really.
No one knew it existed,
and that's exactly
how they'd want it.
That unit's name was CIB3,
and for the first
time, this is its story.
In the early 1990s, the
Metropolitan Police was
facing a number of challenges
and the allegations of
corruption that dogged the
organisation in the 70s and 80s
threatened to rear
their ugly heads again.
The unsolved m*rder
of a private investigator
called Daniel Morgan
whose business partner
was subsequently linked to
corrupt Met Police officers,
was just one of several
high-profile cases
that was bringing the
Met into the spotlight
for all the wrong reasons.
In the early 1990s, cases of
corruption were still arising.
The Metropolitan Police attitude
to it was damage limitation,
first of all, because it
usually followed publicity.
A newspaper would
highlight a case of corruption
and the Met would
react against that,
and then things would
continue and again,
another case would come up.
So, it was damage
limitation each time.
Sometimes it wasn't just
the popular newspapers
who did these stories and
examined the corruption,
but also very influential
was the Times Newspaper,
establishment newspaper,
and it highlighted
that police corruption still was
still going on and highlighted
a particular case where a
senior detective was saying
that he could ring up anyone
at any station across London
and they'd fix things, and he
was actually used the phrase,
'We're firm within a firm.'
There were major concerns
that corruption was spiralling
out of control in certain
pockets of London.
At the Stoke Newington
in North London,
public outrage and
demonstrations about misconduct
were becoming commonplace,
adding to the pressure
already mounting on the Met.
There were always
demonstrations going on,
and especially in Stoke
Newington and some of the other
police stations nearby,
there were demonstrations
about how people had
been stopped and searched,
the behaviours
of police officers.
So, I'm aware of that
because some of the officers
that I was going
through my training with,
so you do your training, then
you'd go and meet up again
every month for this continuous
training that you had to do.
So, when you met up again
with officers that had gone to
other police stations,
their attitudes had changed
because they were a
lot more confrontational
because of the demonstrations.
A scandal involving an
informant and a detective called
Roy Lewandowski threatened
to shatter the already
fractious relationship
between police and the public.
There was a corrupt relationship
between a drug dealer
called Pearl Cameron
who sold rocks of cocaine,
rocks of crack from her
house, and that became known
because she was
dealing with a lot of people.
Sometimes up to 80 wraps
a day, which is quite a lot
of material and word
obviously got to the police,
but she was protected
by a particular
corrupt detective
called Roy Lewandowski.
He got money from Pearl Cameron.
She paid him up to a
thousand pounds a week
for protection money, and in
turn, she gave the names of
and details of people
who were buying drugs
from her to Roy Lewandowski.
He was then able
to either make arrests
or steal the drugs from the
buyer or sometimes do both.
The Met launched an
investigation dubbed Operation
Jackpot
as a result of public
and internal pressure,
but it was clear
corruption wasn't
confined to Stoke Newington.
The thing about corruption
at Stoke Newington
was it was highlighted
through various reasons,
but it was probably going
on at just about every
police station to
various degrees.
There were certain
branches or departments
that had reputations, and
even like when you wanted to
contact them legitimately
for help in dealing with a case.
After nine o'clock in the
morning, you'd ring a pub
because they'd
be in a certain pub,
or you'd drink a certain
club in wherever they were.
So, they had
reputations for drinking,
for going to gentlemen's
only clubs for behaviours that
were questionable and
for removing property
and pocketing it because it
was almost like they shared
the property that
they came across.
An example I can give you
is that we'd do a stop on a car
and if the car had drugs in it,
sometimes you'd stop a car,
and the boot would be
absolutely full of drugs.
You would then call
up the CID to say,
'Right, we need this car
transported back and it's
there's a huge amount of drugs'
or whatever the situation is,
'Or a g*n or
whatever's in this car.'
By the time that car
got back to the station,
it wouldn't be a
full boot anymore.
It would be half a boot, or
something would be missing,
or the jewellery would've
gone, or the g*n would've gone.
All sorts of things
were not in the car,
and you couldn't explain it
and you could never challenge.
You could never say
who did this because
it was like a closed circle.
No one's ever going to admit
to being the person who took
the stuff and everybody
else would say, oh, it happens.
Oh, it must have
got lost on the way.
Oh, it was left
unattended in the car.
As well as
corruption being rife,
it was clear that the
infrastructure for reporting and
dealing
with corrupt behaviour
was at best, inadequate,
at worst, non-existent.
When this started
happening, when I first started,
I didn't really know what
to make of it and I didn't
really know what was happening.
And then over a period
of time you realise
it's happening again and again.
You start putting 2 and 2
together and you realise
that people are taking the
property for their own use
or for their gain, but there's
nothing you can do about it.
And I remember
that I did actually raise
an issue with an
inspector, my inspector,
and his words were,
'Well, if you think I'm going
to back you against that lot,
you've got another
thing coming.'
Because it was
just the way it was.
More often than not, if a
detective or senior officer
was suspected of corruption,
they'd simply be moved
on to a different branch.
In the 1990s, if there was
a suspicion that you were
a corrupt officer, what
the senior officers there
would probably
do is transfer you.
So, they didn't want
to get their hands dirty,
they didn't want to be
the person challenging.
They didn't have the
power or the support
to do anything about it.
So, normally those individuals
would either be promoted,
or they would be transferred,
and if one of them got
transferred to
another police station,
the other corrupt
team would then follow
gradually so they'd
all get transfers.
The complaints process
was absolutely flawed.
It was not fit for purpose.
The complaints department
was made up of individuals
who had worked with
some of these individuals
and who themselves
were corrupt officers,
and it was like the
criminal fraternity.
When they talk about being
a grass, it's exactly the same.
Being a police officer,
you would be called a grass
if you gave evidence
against another officer.
'It's better to be
looking the other way.'
'It's better to ignore it than
to actually taint yourself
and your career and
any sort of development
that you have yourself.'
That was how it was.
Whilst Lewandowski did
eventually go down for 18 months
for stealing 2000 pounds
worth of books from
a deceased man's
private collection,
Operation Jackpot was largely
lambasted for its failure
to convict more
suspected senior officers.
The situation reached
breaking point in 1993.
There were two Panorama
programmes both centring
on a corrupt detective
called John Donald,
who worked for the
southeast regional crime squad,
SERCS, in short.
Now John Donald had a corrupt
relationship with a criminal,
a drug dealer and a drug
dealer went to Panorama
and told about his
relationship with John Donald
and was filmed handing
over money and meeting
John Donald secretly and so
on, and they also showed that
John Donald linked
with other officers in
important key
intelligence roles.
One worked for NCIS, National
Criminal Intelligence Service,
and he gave information
to John Donald
who then could pass
it on to the criminal.
The programmes were to
cause major embarrassment
for the Met on several fronts.
They not only highlighted that
corruption was out of control,
alleged links to secretive
organisations such as Freemasons
but also that they had no
clear strategy to combat it.
What was clear from that
was that there'd been an
investigation going on
into John Donald at the time,
but those investigators
who came from the old C.I.B.
old Complaints
Investigation Branch Bureau,
they were unaware
first of all, that Panorama
was doing any filming
involving John Donald,
and they were unaware
that there was a separate
intelligence operation
going on to John Donald.
In short, they didn't
really have a clue.
What they were doing was
researching a complaint made
about John Donald by a
Bournemouth restaurateur,
that restaurateur claimed
and complained officially
to the Met about John Donald
demanding £5,000 from him.
And what the investigators
into that complaint wanted
was to film John Donald
accepting £5,000
from the restaurateur.
Now, this was in
Bournemouth, and unfortunately
the officers investigating
had booked to stay in a hotel
that was also used at the same
time for a Masonic function,
and a lot of officers were
involved in Freemasonry and some
of them were at this Bournemouth
hotel at the same time
as these corruption
investigators.
And it seems as though
John Donald was somehow
tipped off maybe by
someone, a masonry friend.
Anyway, John Donald never
showed up at the restaurant
to collect his £5,000.
It was a waste of time,
and it showed, as well,
how leaks were possible
in such a large organisation
as a Metropolitan Police.
What was needed was
a total change of strategy.
Why would an officer
go into corrupt activity?
It's a difficult question
to say why police officers
can become corrupt
because it's very complex.
In the main, I think it's greed.
There's an opportunity
literally overnight to triple,
quadruple the
amount of money and
revenue cash that
they can access.
Cash in transit, robberies
were commonplace in the 90s,
large quantitative
drugs, with that cash that
were too much for
some and very tempting.
If you look at a Detective or
a Cop and they're restricted
in their lifestyle, they can't
do things that perhaps they'd
like to do, and then
they're rubbing shoulders
with serious criminals
who've got pound notes
hanging out their back pockets.
They live a lovely, glamorous
lifestyle, playboy lifestyle,
and they want some of the action
and the temptation
is too much for them.
Greed, ego, and the power thing.
Power and control of somebody.
Bit of peer pressure.
Most of them were on
squads and those squads,
you wanted to be one
of the boys or to fit in.
That's where the team corruption
becomes a difficult issue
for maybe younger,
inexperienced officers
that get drawn
into that corruption.
Some officers are influenced
by others, but there are others
who are genuinely
just bad people.
They've got access to money,
they've got access to power,
and they abuse that power.
In the early 90s, the
Metropolitan Police
had a growing
problem with corruption.
Major questions were
being asked about its integrity
and ability to
police the capital.
The top brass widely
acknowledged that a radical
change
in strategy was needed, and
the man given the job was an
experienced long-serving
detective called Roger Gaspar.
Known for cracking paedophile
rings in North London,
he was a meticulous investigator
who the senior
police chiefs hoped
would get a handle
on the problem.
I'm Roger Gaspar.
I had been involved in
all sorts of detective work
over the years, and I got
involved with CIB2 in 1994.
Roger absolute top
operator, a fantastic detective,
a history working in
intelligence and serious crime.
He was the only man for the
job in my book, at that time.
If you are dealing
with a case of corruption,
what you understand
very quickly is that this is
some of the most important
work for the police service,
undermining the reputation,
the quality of the work.
It's undermining the public;
it's destroying the
whole point of it all.
So, you had to take action.
Roger's brief was enormous.
Let's not in any
way belittle that.
To be given a brief by the
commissioner that says,
I've got my suspicions.
I've got some little sniffs and
snorts around the organisation
that things aren't very good.
We've got some corrupt
officers, but I just don't know
I'm not going to put loads of
resources into investigating it
if in fact it's a fallacy
and I'm seeing shadows
where there aren't shadows.
So, Roger, can you get out
there, get your hands dirty,
get underneath the
covers, lift the drain lids up.
What's under those drain
lids? What's under the covers?
Is it honest, hardworking cops,
or is it corrupt cops or
is it a mixture of the two?
But cracking police
corruption wasn't the only
challenge Roger faced,
and it quickly became clear
that he had his work cut out.
When Roger Gaspar
arrived and took over at CIB2,
he realised he was up
against it with the staff there.
Officers that were employed
or deployed on anti-corruption
measures were such that
they didn't have the skills.
They were often
brought from uniform
and didn't have
investigative skills,
didn't have the understanding
of the techniques
that were being used
by corrupt officers.
They had got very little
background knowledge.
So, for example, we had one
whose background was
Traffic, not detective work.
A lot of them were
near retirement.
They didn't really
do any investigations.
As well as issues with
personnel, there were problems
with the infrastructure that
could potentially compromise
any secret investigations
that were carried out.
If we'd started to
do any covert work,
we had a problem that
we had to go and borrow
for the same equipment as
the corrupt people were using,
and this is a small
technical unit.
We would have to go
and borrow equipment.
And if we took the last bit
of equipment and another
operational team then
asked for some more stuff
and we're told, oh no, sorry,
the last one's gone out to CIB2,
you had this sort of natural
knowledge that flowed
around in the service.
None of it necessarily
that were deliberate,
but this needed to
become professional.
This is not rocket science.
If you go, look at the
cycle of how you build
a successful
investigative capability
you can't go out of the front
door poking about in the dark.
You'd be chasing your tail.
You will never achieve anything.
You've got to understand
what's the intelligence picture
that's going to
inform how I operate.
Now if you look on a national
scale, national security
for the country, you've got
the investigations that go on,
but the people who are
gathering the intelligence
to arm the investigations
are the security services.
Internationally,
MI6, home is MI5.
They will be developing
the intelligence
and they'll be handing
it to the police and to
the investigation to turn
that intelligence into evidence.
So as night follows
day, you had to have
something like the Ghost Squad.
The fact that it was nicknamed
the Ghost Squad sums it up.
No one knew it existed.
No one knew what they were doing
and that's exactly
how he'd want it.
The name might've sounded
like something from a Cold w*r
espionage thriller,
but the reality for
Roger was a little
less mysterious.
He shut himself off in
an upstairs room secretly
from the rest of CIB2, to
try and assess the level
of corruption throughout
the Metropolitan Police.
I wanted to have a team
that nobody would know about,
that would not be recognised,
and I wanted the secret
team to be eyes and ears
who could actually
collect new evidence.
Early on a Sunday morning,
Gasper decided to get 10 senior
officers together that he
trusted for a secret meeting.
He asked them all to list
detectives they suspected of
being
corrupt, a staggering
83 names were drawn up
and subsequently analysed
for links and connections.
Many names were connected
to the Southeast
regional crime squad.
What he found was that it
was still fairly widespread,
particularly in pockets, and
he started to devise a scheme
of dealing with it and
argued that there should be an
ultra-secret unit set up,
which would gather intelligence
on the police, and then another
unit attached to it would then
act on that intelligence and try
and catch police and criminals
at it together in their
corrupt relationship.
And he was building up
dossiers on what he saw
as being the corruption
picture within the Met.
He slapped that onto
the commissioner's table.
Good morning, sir, some
light reading for the weekend.
Light reading it wasn't.
The report painted a
damning picture for the then
Commissioner Paul Condon.
Unlike the last big purge,
a decade earlier when
corrupt officers were dealt
with through forced retirements,
it was decided that this
time arrests and convictions
were essential in order to
restore the Mets' credibility.
When the intelligence
picture became clearer
from Roger Gaspar's report,
the commissioner sat down
in a dark room with a wet
towel on his head and thought,
well, how the hell am I
going to then investigate this
effectively to the point
where it's not going to be
so expensive and exhaustive,
it's going to grind the whole
of the Met to a halt.
And he came up
with a plan which said,
'Well, I'm going to have
to get the best detectives
that I've got, and I'm going to
have to form a really proactive,
strong investigative arm,
and they can use all the tactics
that they've used in the
past against top criminals,
international criminals, and
I want them to be let loose
on the corrupt cops in the Met.
Roger Gaspar's work
with the Ghost Squad
was widely acknowledged
for establishing just how
widespread corruption
was within the Met,
but it had limited success when
it came to gathering evidence
that was usable in court to
prosecute corrupt officers.
What came next
was a game changer
in the fight against corruption.
Following his report, the
decision was taken to form a
new unit called CIB3, whose
objective was to carry out
proactive operations for
the first time to catch corrupt
officers in the act with
irrefutable evidence
that would lead to convictions.
I don't think you can
underestimate how significant
the formation of CIB3 was
in the history of the Met.
This was an opportunity to
do something that had never
been done before, in
the way they went about it,
which is about creating a
squad of premier operators
in the world of investigation.
They're audacious in the
way they operate, adventurous,
but within the
parameters of the law,
they were gathering
evidence to take corrupt cops
to the Old Bailey, to grip
the rail and then we had
the best barristers in
London prosecuting.
The man tasked with leading
this team was Dave Wood,
a career detective
with vast experience in
tackling serious
and organised crime.
He was a very
experienced detective.
He was so thoughtful, very
strategic, but very operational.
So, he could kick a door in
at six o'clock in the morning,
but he could also write a
strategy at 5 in the afternoon.
That's a wicked combination.
And behind Dave Wood
was a team of detectives,
all experts in their field,
whose integrity was
unquestionable.
They were pulled in
from various departments
of the Met and
regional police forces.
The officers that were
called to CIB3 were basically
handpicked and they were chosen
for their different skills.
There was those officers
that were very, very good at
interviews, for instance,
gathering intelligence,
gathering information.
Then there was investigators.
To maintain CIB3 secrecy
and to avoid the leaks
that blighted CIB2, detectives
were recruited in secret
without even knowing
about the unit's formation.
Nobody knew what
we were going into
and why they were being called.
And all of a sudden
there was this briefing
by the Deputy
Commissioner at the time
to say that we've
got a big problem.
You've been handpicked. You
are here to fight corruption.
I was shocked. I was taken back.
I wanted to stay on the
drug squad, personally.
I didn't want to go to
this newly formed unit,
and I think quite a few of
my peers were colleagues.
They were the same
because it was an unknown.
But as news of CIB3's existence
started to filter through
the Met its new recruits
had to face down more than
just catching corrupt
police officers.
There was a stigma.
The general feeling was;
people are being targeted.
There's no corruption.
Rubber heelers, I think
is the term that they use.
We were sort of looked
at and not trusted.
We all of a sudden thought,
we don't really want to be here.
We don't want to do this.
But once the arrests started
happening and once the cases
started going to court, there
was a complete wind change
in that actually people didn't
realise what magnitude it was,
what the corruption was.
And once they started
to realise armed robberies
being committed by
police officers, drug dealing
being committed by police
officers, stealing large
quantities
of cash being committed
by police officers,
all of a sudden, the
attitude completely changed.
I think it did become
fairly exciting
because the police had
never done this before.
It was a new challenge.
Key to CIB3 getting results
was its shift in strategy
and it was clear
to its new recruits
that the Met were
leaving no stone unturned.
Before CIB3 counter-corruption
wasn't taken seriously, really,
and it didn't have the resources
thrown at it to actually
investigate to the point of
gathering evidence, that was
sound evidence, that could
be used in the prosecution.
It's easy to get intelligence,
it's easy to get information,
but actually to get evidence
of corruption is very difficult.
The formation of
CIB3, I think was A)
a turning point and
extremely significant
in the fight against corruption.
Never before had so many
resources from a proactive side
been thrown into dealing
with anti-corruption
or dealing with corruption.
So, we were given those
resources, not only we were
given
the resources, we were allowed
within reason, obviously,
and legally, allowed to push
the barriers, which we did,
and we had the
equipment to deal with that.
And as well as
having the resources,
the infrastructure
was changing too.
The main difference between
CIB3 and what had gone before
was that it worked
in total secrecy.
There were two units within
CIB3, one gathered intelligence,
followed up suspect
officers, followed them,
they bugged their telephones,
bugged their homes,
talked to associates and
so on, did financial inquiries
about them, and when they
got what they thought was
evidence of wrongdoing of
corruption, that information
would then be passed over
to the active side of the CIB3
who would then act
on this information
and try and get evidence,
try and get people to talk.
Gathering evidence in this
proactive manner was essential
if CIB3 was going
to have a chance of
turning prosecutions
into convictions.
In the past, a lot of
investigations for corrupt cops
spent years going
through appeals.
People wriggling like fish
caught on the end of a fishing
line,
trying to get off, trying to
find any angle that they
possibly
could to make a legal argument
that makes them walk away.
So that's no different to
investigating serious crime,
of course, but I think it
becomes even more pertinent
when you're looking
at corrupt cops because
I mean, they know the system.
And what you don't
want to do is inadvertently
cut a corner, which
opens up a right of appeal.
So, one of the things that I
think is notable about CIB3
is if you look at their track
record, the evidence was so
compelling and persuasive
that they ended up either
changing their plea
from not guilty to guilty
or going straight to
guilty in the first place.
Or in a few instances realising,
'Well, my back's
against the wall here,
I've got no wiggle
room whatsoever.
I know what I'll do. I'll
become an informant.'
And they became a supergrass,
and therefore they got
maybe a lighter, lenient
sentence in the way of being
dealt with, and they went
into a protective custody,
and they were
providing intelligence
against other corrupt cops.
In 1997, just prior to CIB3's
formation, Dave Wood
and his team went after a
former Met detective called
Duncan Hanrahan,
who had extensive links
to corrupt officers and
criminals in Southeast London,
including a notorious
private investigation firm
called Southern Investigations.
Code named Operation
Eden, it was one of the
first operations that would
put Dave Wood's new proactive
strategy to the test and give
the Met its first supergrass.
Investigating serious
crime can be really
beneficial if you
get a supergrass.
What's a supergrass?
It's someone who's been
involved in criminality,
sees there's an opportunity
probably to get a reduced
sentence if they basically
snitch on fellow criminals.
Now, CIB3, when they
were investigating corruption,
were able to use
supergrasses in that way.
And probably the most
notable early doors
of supergrasses was a guy
called Duncan Hanrahan.
But who was Duncan Hanrahan?
Now, Hanrahan
was an ex-detective,
and he was acting
really as the go-between,
the conduit between the
criminal world and those
who are corrupt cops
and the criminal world,
they just love a corrupt cop.
It covers their back, it
gives them information,
and everyone wins.
The cop gets the
money in his back pocket
and the criminal hopefully
is being protected.
In this case, Duncan
Hanrahan was working
with Southern Investigations
who he had previous
suspected corrupt links with
when he was a serving detective.
Southern Investigations came
up onto the intelligence radar
from an operation which
was spanned over a few years,
and they were gathering
intelligence as to whether or
not
there was corruption within
the Metropolitan Police.
And hey h*, the light bulb came
up on Southern Investigations.
Run by a guy called
Jonathan Reese, an ex-cop,
no surprise there
and he was working
very closely with
Duncan Hanrahan.
That was really the source of
friction within
Southern investigations.
And there are some
suspicions that the k*lling
of Daniel Morgan may
have been linked to that,
but that's really
never been proved.
Another player within that
scenario was, at that time,
a serving Detective
Sergeant Sid Fillery.
Now Sid Fillery, no
surprise here either,
he was then employed to
investigate the m*rder of
Daniel Morgan, and it's been
well reported that the suspicion
around the corruption of
that investigation has led to
actually no result, no
outcome of that investigation.
So, all in all, what we're
seeing here is an ex-detective
themselves, Jonathan
Reese, using Duncan Hanrahan
to his own end to make
sure an investigation
of an alleged robbery
grinds to a halt,
and then an alleged m*rder,
which linked suspicions
with Reese and
Southern Investigations
was then investigated by a
serving Detective Sergeant,
who again had links into
Southern Investigations,
and that's never
actually been concluded.
The relationship
between Hanrahan
and Southern Investigations
continued after Hanrahan
had left the Met on
grounds of ill health.
And what Operation Eden
found was that together
they were keen to
recruit more bent coppers.
Duncan Hanrahan
was an important figure.
He was often seen
drinking with Jonathan Rees,
Sid Fillery and Alex Leighton.
Alex Leighton was a
sergeant named as corrupt
in the John Donald Prosecution.
They were all Freemasons
and met on Freemasons basis.
The behaviour of Duncan
Hanrahan, being the go-between
between Southern
Investigations, Jonathan Rees,
and corruption in the
Met, had no real limits.
A good example of that is
that they wanted to find out
exactly what the evidence
was on an investigation.
How would they sort
of construct a defence
for one of their
fellow criminals?
So, what Hanrahan did is he
approached an honest serving
Detective Chief Inspector,
called Chief Inspector Elcock,
who was running the internal
complaints investigations
in Edmonton as part of the
Met, and he entertained Elcock
over some liquid lunches
and was trying to entice Elcock
to investigate what was
seen to be a false complaint,
and then reveal some of the
information and the evidence
of a current investigation
against a fellow criminal.
Elcock being an up
and standing honest cop
reports the inappropriate
approach by Hanrahan and CIB3
are then able to put a cloak
of protection around Elcock
and direct him accordingly
to get a snare on Hanrahan
and his criminal
activity as trying to
entice corruption
within the Met.
He was reluctant to get
involved, but he was persuaded
by CIB3 who said, just listen
to what Hanrahan's saying
and agree to do
this and that for him.
This is a guy that is end of his
service, looking for retirement.
It must have been
a nightmare for him.
Elcock decided to go ahead,
but he was still very worried
about the situation
because CIB3 provided
him with recording equipment.
He'd had no training in
using the equipment before.
He had no training in
playing along with corruption.
Elcock was in an
unenviable position,
but without his involvement,
CIB3 wouldn't have been able
to gather the evidence they
needed to nail Hanrahan.
He was having to please
Hanrahan and show that he was
actually corrupt, but he wasn't.
And he was also having
to have a meeting with CIB3
to get directions
as to how they could
get evidence against Hanrahan.
On one occasion, what Elcock
did was he fabricated the police
pocket notebooks to convince
Hanrahan he was corrupt.
But all along he was honest,
and he was showing him
basically false information.
Elcock continued to play his
part as the reluctant go-between
nurturing the corrupt
relationship on behalf of CIB3.
It wasn't long before Elcock
was introduced to a bigger fish.
There were further
meetings with Hanrahan,
but then Hanrahan
turned out basically to be
an errand boy for a
much bigger personage.
Someone called Martin King.
He had been a detective,
a serious detective,
but he'd gone corrupt
and had been suspected of
corruption and had left
the Metropolitan Police.
He then ran a restaurant and
a nightclub and a snooker hall,
and through them came into
contact with heavy criminals.
One of the things that he
agreed to do, this is King,
agreed to do for the criminals,
was to claim rewards for some of
the activities that the
criminals had been involved in.
One of them involved
a Henry Moore statue,
which was said to
be worth a £100,000.
Now, King wanted Elcock
to put his name forward,
King's name forward
as an informant,
on the whereabouts
of the statue.
The reward of £10,000
was paid to King,
who gave £1,000 of it to Elcock.
As the Elcock and King
relationship developed further,
so did the favours he
was being asked to do.
When asked to get involved
in a potential m*rder plot,
CIB3 were there to step in.
King asked Elcock to get
a witness in a forthcoming
prosecution case, a key witness
in a prosecution case
to meet with him, Elcock.
And Elcock would
somehow manage to get him
to the top of a
tower block of flats.
Once there, Elcock could then
withdraw, and King's Associates
would move in and push
the guy off the top of the
tower block of flats
and basically k*ll him.
At that stage, Elcock
got even more nervous
and worried about it
and contacted CIB3.
CIB3 said, 'This has gone far
enough we better stop this now.'
CIB3 decided then
that the operation
had to be called off,
and they moved in.
They arrested King and Harahan
and hoped that one of them,
or both of them,
would turn supergrass,
to save their own skin.
What is a fascinating scenario
here is the common thread
is all these players are
former police officers.
And what Southern
investigations Jonathan Reese
wanted was the ability to
be able to get an inside track
of what's going on in the
Met and in investigations.
So, he basically was using
Hanrahan as a recruiting agency
to approach serving cops to
see if they were vulnerable,
to be able to turn into
corruption and serve the
purposes
of Jonathan Reese and
Southern Investigations.
Now, in the custody of
CIB3, the investigation team
went to work on
King and Hanrahan,
hoping to get them talking.
King happy to take
whatever sentence
was thrown at
him, refused to talk.
However, the weight of
evidence CIB3 gathered
against Hanrahan,
resulted in him confessing to
having links with various
well-known criminals.
Hanrahan knew he
had nowhere to go,
and the only alternative
for him to try and get a
reduced sentence at court
was to turn supergrass.
He made widespread admissions
of his criminal activity.
But whilst on remand
at Parkhurst Prison's
supergrass Wing intelligence
was received that Hanrahan
had told a fellow supergrass
Ray Brown, they had only told
investigators half the
truth, to protect friends.
A further operation was
mounted, and conversations
were covertly recorded
between Hanrahan and Brown,
confirming the intelligence.
It's not uncommon for
someone like Hanrahan who is
a supergrass to try and
dupe the investigating officers.
He gave what he saw as a
bit of bait, really to the CIB3,
hoping that what he gave
them was going to be sufficient.
What he didn't account for is
he couldn't keep his mouth shut.
He goes to prison
and he's bragging to a
fellow inmate that's
what he's done.
So, there's no friendships
amongst criminals.
So, the person he's sort
of bragging to decides,
'Well, hang on, I could
get some discount here
if he is, so can I.'
And he tells the authorities
of the lies that Hanrahan had
said to the
investigating officers.
He gets re-arrested
and it all starts again.
Hanrahan's second
round of confessions
proved to be more revealing.
He omitted arranging the
theft of 40,000 ecstasy tablets
with a street value of
£600,000 from a West London
drug dealer Jason Proctor.
Proctor was the manager of the
Good Value Pine Shop in Chiswick
Vincent Arnell, a
criminal associated with
Hanrahan ordered the drugs.
Then two friends of
Hanrahan, DS Len Guerard and
DC Chris Carter
ex*cuted a search warrant
purporting to be
looking for stolen lighters
when they knew the drugs
were at the Pine shop.
The drugs were not
taken to the police station,
but loaded into Hanrahan's
van nearby, Guerard and Carter
told their boss that
nothing had been found.
The drugs were then sold in
Scotland with the assistance of
a man called Steven Warner
and the proceeds divided.
Warner was a known criminal
who was of interest to CIB3
because of his connection
to the Adams family
who had links to organised
crime in North London.
If they got Warner on board,
then he could maybe give them
information about the Adams
family that would help convict
some of them because
the Adams family
had escaped major prosecutions.
Using undercover officers,
CIB3 engaged with Warner
in the hope of securing
evidence of criminal activity
and intel on his
criminal network.
It wasn't long before
they got results.
They knew that Warner
was a drug dealer,
so they had an undercover
officer who called himself Dave,
get into him to want
to buy some drugs,
and the undercover
officer did get some drugs,
and then Warner thinking
that this was a good contact,
asked him to do some
more work for him to get
at a particular witness
and to maybe k*ll a witness.
The intended victim of
this sinister plot was a man
called Jimmy Cook, a criminal
associate of Jonathan Rees.
Another undercover officer
was introduced to Warner as a
contract k*ller and asked to
k*ll Jimmy Cook for £10,000.
A deposit of £500 was paid,
a Browning automatic weapon
provided along with a
photograph of the target.
This was enough for
investigating officers to arrest
Warner.
Warner subsequently admitted
a series of serious offences,
including the
conspiracy with Hanrahan
to steal the 40,000
ecstasy tablets, the supply
of a kilo of cocaine and
incitement to m*rder.
He also provided new
insignificant evidence regarding
the m*rder of Daniel Morgan
and indicated a willingness
to give evidence of corruption
against police officers,
including Guerard and Carter.
Operation Eden was
deemed a success
because it had got Hanrahan,
it had exposed Martin King,
and it had got Steven Warner,
a drugs dealer, and
all were convicted.
So, it was a success, and it
was a success as well because
the undercover officers were
used successfully in a way,
and the sting involving
Hanrahan, King, and
Elcock that also worked well.
These were tactics that
were adopted later on
in other operations with CIB3.
However, there were
lessons to be learned
from Operation Eden,
as Warner was sentenced
before he was required
to give evidence,
having received what he thought
was a lenient prison term,
he then refused to testify
against Hanrahan and the others.
In addition to this,
Hanrahan's credibility was
brought into question
by Guerard and Carter,
who with previous clean records
were cleared of any charges.
The lessons learned were
harsh, but they would inform how
CIB3 operated going forward
in their fight
against corruption.
Welcome to our World! Where we serve you cookies to ensure you get the best viewing experience on our site.
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
01x01 - Episode 1
Watch/Buy Amazon
The Real Line of Duty tells the story of an undercover police unit set up to crack the cycle of corruption that engulfed the Met in the 90s, and the brave officers who fought for justice from within.
The Real Line of Duty tells the story of an undercover police unit set up to crack the cycle of corruption that engulfed the Met in the 90s, and the brave officers who fought for justice from within.