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 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.
CIB3 was set up in 1998
with the specific objective
of smashing the
cycle of corruption
that had plagued the
Met in the previous years.
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
counter-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.
One of its first targets was
a private investigation firm
called Southern Investigations
and a bent copper
called Austin Warnes.
The story really with Southern
Investigations begins in 1987
with the m*rder of
Jonathan Rees's then partner,
running the organisation,
Daniel Morgan.
Morgan was found
dead with an axe
in his head in a pub car park.
Several people have been
charged with involvement
in the m*rder, but no one
has ever been convicted.
Sid Fillery came into
the picture because
he was one of those
involved in investigating the
Daniel Morgan m*rder, and
he was suspected at one stage
of removing what he thought
was incriminating documents.
Because allegations had
been made against him,
he was removed from
the m*rder investigation
and in fact left the police
under something of a cloud.
And then a couple of
years after the m*rder,
he then stepped into
the dead mans shoes.
Daniel Morgan's shoes and
became partner with Rees.
The pair of them then started
going, doing a lot of business
with newspapers and
media organisations,
getting information from
police, corrupt police,
who would pass information
to some investigations
who then pass on the
information to newspapers
who would then do a
story stories about it
and this went on for some time.
So, Southern Investigations
was becoming something
of a thorn in the
Metropolitan police's side.
They were causing
the Met problems.
CIB3 decides to target
Southern Investigations
using its newfound
powers to bug their office
with surveillance equipment.
The aim was to collect
evidence that would help prove
there was a corrupt
involvement with
Daniel Morgan's unsolved m*rder.
But the surveillance
uncovered another chilling case
of corruption in action.
They were approached by
a guy who was really worried
about losing custody of his
child because he was going
through a dreadful acrimonious
divorce with his wife.
The couple were called
Simon and Kim James.
Simon James told Jonathan Rees
that he suspected his wife
was involved in drug dealing.
Rees said, okay, well we'll get
evidence about
that drug dealing.
And the pair agreed that when
there was a divorce hearing,
this would be very telling
evidence against the wife,
and it was hoped the judge
would then give the husband,
Simon James,
custody of their child.
Rees carried out a little bit of
investigation but then couldn't
find anything relating to the
wife being involved in drugs.
However, despite
not finding any leads,
they didn't give up
on helping their client.
They instead came up
with an audacious plan
to frame Kim James.
So, these two in Southern
Investigations says,
'I've got a plan, what we can
do your wife/partner goes out
night clubbing a lot, so ideally
if we can put in her possession
some drugs, cocaine typically,
we can then tip the cops off.
She'll get nicked.
Her credibility is shot a
bits, so when she tries to get
custody of the child, there's
no chance that the judge is
going to give it because
she'd be seen as a drug dealer.'
'Happy days, you get custody
that'll cost you £7,500.'
So, for seven and a half grand,
this guy says,
'Yeah, I'm up for that.'
But for the plan to work,
Southern Investigations
would need the
planted drug seized
by police officers.
Rees and Fillery had
to have an inside man,
an inside corrupt cop.
That's when they
turned to Austin Warnes.
Austin Warnes was regional
crime squad detective.
He was pretty good.
He was seen I think he was
seen by some of his peers
as a bit of a loose
lips sort of individual,
but he had served on
the regional crime squad
and had served on crime
squads and you don't serve on
those sort of squads unless
you have a proven background.
Austin Warnes was obviously
quite happy to go along
with this fitting up of drugs
on an innocent woman,
he falsified a report saying
that he'd had intelligence.
An informant was telling him
that she was dealing drugs.
That meant that after the drugs
had been planted in the car,
he would then tip
the police off that
there were drugs
there in the car.
She was a drugs dealer
and she'd get arrested.
Without his help in
feeding information
that she was a drug
dealer into the system,
the plan would not have worked.
He was essential
for the plan to work.
He had no scruples whatsoever.
Just think about it.
He's a serving cop.
He gets approached by
Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery,
the owners of
Southern Investigations,
who already put in
their back pocket £7,500
from the partner
who wanted his wife
in the acrimonious
separation to be incriminated.
And what he had to do
was orchestrate the planting
of what drugs were
going to be in the car,
which was going to
incriminate her, to get a false
search warrant for the house
and for the drugs in the car,
and then to execute
that in the full knowledge
that she was innocent.
He does not sign
the papers to be a cop
on day one to behave
in that despicable way.
CIB3 had a complex
job on their hands.
They needed to disrupt
Southern Investigations plan
to frame Kim James and
get enough evidence to ensure
the perpetrators
including Austin Warnes
could be prosecuted
and convicted.
The detective charged
with leading the
operation was Roger Critchell.
Roger Critchell, fantastic
operator headhunted by the boss,
David Wood because he knew
him and trusted him, and he had
been very successful in
investigating serious crime.
If he can do investigating
serious crime,
he can certainly
investigate corrupt cops.
What Roger Critchell's
role in this was pivotal.
I mean, he had his senior
bosses Chief Superintendent,
Superintendent level obviously
being the oversight management
of it, but the development of
the tactics and the execution
of the agreed strategy
was in his hands,
and he had to
have a test of nerve.
He couldn't bottle it.
Roger's job was to
assess the intelligence
and come up with a proactive,
covert strategy that would
catch those involved red handed.
It was known from the bugs
that the drugs were going to be
planted in the wife's
car, Kim James's car.
Why they chose the car,
I don't know, but I suspect
it was easier because
if you used the house,
how would you get the
drugs into the house,
which if you use a car,
you can do the car in
the middle of the night.
This of course caused
a dilemma for CIB3,
those listening to the
tapes, what do they do?
If we moved in too soon,
then we would've shown
Rees and Warnes the
fact that we were onto them,
but more importantly, we
wouldn't have sufficient
evidence
at that stage to prosecute them.
Roger and his team
decided to let the criminals
plant the drugs
in Kim James' car.
Then when the criminals
had completed their work,
they'd replaced the cocaine
with a harmless substance.
This would firstly enable
Roger's team to prove
that the drugs
planted were cocaine.
Secondly, it would Take
away any doubt that Kim James
had anything to do
with the ill*gal drugs.
And thirdly, as all of this
was happening covertly,
it meant Southern
Investigations and Austin Warnes
would carry on with
their plans to report
Kim James as a
suspected drug dealer.
So, we decided that
the best thing to do
was to substitute the drugs.
That was the best evidential
opportunity that we had to be
able to prove to a jury
that Kim James was
completely innocent.
It also showed the
magnitude of the corruption.
CIB3 had a plan, but
this strategy presented
a number of dilemmas
for Roger's team.
They were going to have to
let the regular police who had
been tipped off by Warnes
search Kim James's car,
find what they
thought were real drugs
and subsequently arrest her.
It was clear that CIB3
was in unchartered territory.
The operation as because
of what we then knew,
i.e. the planting of drugs
become quite significant
in a number of factors.
We had the ethical and
moral issue of Kim James.
We were going to
allow an innocent person
to be arrested believing that
there was drugs in her car.
Do you include her in
what was going on with the
potential that you couldn't
rely on her being discreet
and the whole operation
would be blown apart.
However, as well as the
ethical and moral issues,
CIB3 had to consider the
legality of what they were doing
or risk the evidence they'd
worked so hard to gather
being thrown out
at any future trial.
I'd personally spoke to
the C.P.S. at the time to
think about was it legal
what we were doing
because we were
going to let it happen.
And the decision was yes,
it was legal to carry it out
in the fact that we
were going to allow
a number of police officers
to go to the car to search it,
believing that there
was drugs there,
knowing that they
had been planted,
and knowing that a serving
police officer Austin Warnes
knew that they were
going to be planted,
it was decided that
that was okay to do.
So, they had surveillance
cameras trained on the car
and the area, CIB3, and they
waited and eventually a friend,
a colleague of Jonathan Rees
called Jimmy Cook turned up.
He was also a drug dealer
into lots of other things,
and he had in fact himself
been a suspect involved
in the m*rder of Daniel Morgan.
He was seen
breaking into the car,
entering the car, and
planting some drugs there.
With the drugs in
Kim James's car,
it was now up to corrupt officer
Austin Warnes to play his part.
Austin Warnes didn't
actually get involved
in the planning of the drugs.
His participation in this crime
was to arrange for a police unit
not corrupt, to see to
conduct a search warrant
on Kim James' car.
He put in an information report.
He made out that it
was from an informant,
which was total rubbish
obviously, and in the belief
in Austin Warnes' belief and
in the belief of Jimmy Cook
and Jonathan Rees,
that that was the job done.
With the regular
police now tipped off,
a search on Kim
James's car was imminent.
CIB3 had to act quickly,
swap the real drugs
planted by Jimmy Cook
for a harmless substance.
The swap was a success,
but for Kim James,
her nightmare
was just beginning.
Although CIB3 had
switched the drugs
for a harmless substance,
Kim James didn't know that.
She thought she'd had it.
Having to go through
the trauma and the pain
of having her house
and her car searched
then the discovery of
what she thought was drugs.
But she knows that
they weren't her drugs
because she's not a drug dealer,
being taken into custody,
and yet we all
knew other than her
that she was totally innocent.
I think she actually fainted or
passed out in the custody
office.
Such was the magnitude of
what was happening to her.
And she obviously knew
she was completely innocent
and here she is knowing full
well that this custody battle
is going on and therefore
now what's just happened
means she's going
to lose her child.
It's a serious offence
against Kim James here
because the amount of drugs
and the packaging of the drugs
suggested that she was
supplying controlled drugs.
As Kim James's world came
crashing down around her,
her estranged partner
Simon James, as predicted,
applied to the court
for custody of their child.
She just didn't know
what was happening.
Her whole world had
been turned upside down.
If she was interviewed, she
denied any
knowledge of the drugs.
After interview they released
her on police bail to return
to the police station once
the drugs had been analysed.
That could in
normal circumstances
take a significant
amount of time.
But time was something that
neither Roger or Kim James had.
The clock was ticking.
And in order to avoid Simon
James being granted custody,
Roger's team had to
think smart and quick.
So, two stages, one stage
was we went and saw the judge,
to the custody
hearing to tell the judge
what was really happening
because there's no doubt
the judge would have given Simon
James custody of that child.
I then had to think how
best to expedite the evidence
against Austin Warnes
because I had a problem in that
I didn't really have that much
evidence against Warnes.
All I had was him contacting
a bona fide police officer
saying that he basically had
information that it was in the
car.
But Roger had noticed
something about Austin Warnes'
tip off to the police
that he could exploit.
We looked at the information
report that Warnes had put in
and it was quite clear to me
that he was alleging that
there was an informant.
I then went and saw the
DCI who was the controller.
Basically, told
him that in fact,
Austin Warnes had
made this whole story up.
He was then given a direction
that he would call Austin Warnes
in to then question the
information that had been put in
and the fact that he
wanted to see the informant.
Warnes now faced with
a dilemma where he's got
to produce an informant
and there isn't an informant.
What's happening here is CIB3
have taken the game to him.
The corrupt cop is on the rack.
He thought he was in charge.
He thought he could
get a search warrant
because he legitimately
had those drugs planted.
As far as he was
concerned, it was watertight.
But what he didn't know
is behind the scenes,
CIB3 had beaten him to it.
So, he's back against the wall.
He's looking for a lifeline.
He's been put on the rack.
You have got to tell
us where did you get
that intelligence from because
the judge wants to know
because before the judge
makes an order - taking away
the custody of the child,
he wants to make sure
that intelligence is legitimate.
That's a really
difficult place to be.
You are rabbit caught
in the headlights.
So, the corrupt cop,
he decides to make it up
that his informant gave
it to him. Big mistake.
Now feeling the pressure,
Austin Warnes put forward
the name of a criminal
associate who was well
connected in
London's underworld.
The informant was a
guy called David Courtney.
I don't know how Warnes
knew him, but Warnes knew him.
He'd been a prize fighter.
He was well connected
in the criminal fraternity,
and he was well known
in the criminal world
in South London.
Now this is a top criminal.
Someone not to be mixed with.
So, Warnes' then
contacted him and it was all
quite bizarre really
because it was a common,
we watched under surveillance.
Warnes' meeting Dave Courtney.
Dave Courtney's girlfriend, then
took a photograph or a video
of Dave Courtney with his
arm round Austin Warnes.
We didn't know at that stage
why that was happening,
but what Warnes was
doing was actually telling
or telling the story, the fact
that he needed Dave Courtney
to go and say that he'd
given that information.
He was spitting feathers
when he found out
that what he had to
do was lie to legitimise
the intelligence for
the search warrant.
When interviewed
for a documentary
about British Gangsters in 2014,
Courtney spoke of the
damage it did to his reputation.
I was actually nicked with a
bent copper and the truth being
I was actually arrested
with a bent copper.
It was resolved but someone
for his own personal reasons
decided to go well I
think Courtney's a grass.'
It weren't right, it
altered my little life,
so for one person in particular,
yeah he did actually put a
little stain on me and it hurt.
As you can imagine
if you are a grass,
if you are an informant and it
publicly comes out that you are
an informant, you're
in a lot of danger.
So, Courtney decides to
not only film the meeting,
but he then tapes Austin
Warnes saying that it was
totally prefabricated that
he just needed a favour.
And the fact that Dave Courtney
had decided to help him out,
I can't remember the
exact words, but it basically
gave Dave Courtney
a clear defence.
The fact that he had
nothing to do with it
and he was just
playing at it really.
At that point, the lab
reports came back confirming
that the drugs found
in the car were fake
and the planted drugs were real.
Finally, Kim James'
nightmare was over.
But for Austin Warnes,
it was just beginning.
I went to Austin Warnes'
house and arrested him.
He was very
flippant. He was very
didn't think we
were a threat to him.
Quite rude, to be honest,
quite blatantly he was going
to be going home
that night in his world.
He was going to be taken to
police station and he was going
to be interviewed and
that would be, that's it.
We didn't have any evidence.
But what we did do
is give a full disclosure
of what we knew
and what took place.
And as a result of that,
his whole world fell apart
because he knew then
he was going to prison.
He knew he was
going to get charged.
And over the course of two
days of interviews with him,
he finally admitted his part
in the actual whole operation.
It all ended up
at the Old Bailey.
There's a bit of a funny side
to it. Courtney is a character.
He turns up dressed up as a
court jester, a couple of times,
just to make light of it.
And they all appeared
at the Old Bailey,
that's Jonathan Rees, Austin
Warnes and Simon James
and all got custodial sentences.
The operation to catch
Southern Investigations and
Austin Warnes in the act
was deemed an early success
for CIB3 and proved
that the change in strategy
in countering
corruption was working.
It's a case that sticks in
my mind because of all the
the whole thing involving
an innocent mother and child
for what? A couple
of thousand quid.
I think that's what he was
getting paid and the fact that
he's
you know, here he is a
police officer and without him,
that would never
have taken place.
But that example just
shows you how audacious
within the parameters
of the law that CIB3 were
able to build a strategy
that turned the tables
on the corrupt cop and the
corruptors, Rees and Fillery,
to the point where
they had nowhere to go,
and they went to prison.
I think an officer
who becomes corrupt,
that is the final straw,
you can't get any worse.
You take an oath when
you become a police officer.
The public expect you to
perform your duty without fear
and also without prejudice and
certainly without any corruption
because the public look
on the police in the main,
the public look on the
police as those people
they turn to when
they're in trouble.
Because you are in
that position of trust.
You've been given a
warrant card, which gives you
power over the liberty of
people, the power of entry.
It gives you so much power
over the normal citizen.
And if you are inclined to be
corrupt or to abuse those powers
I do actually believe
that's the worst kind
of abuse of power
that you can get.
It's incredibly damaging.
Every officer swears the
oath when they join the police
and to actually take
that step against that oath
is a huge issue and
causes massive damage
to not only them
and their families,
but other officers and the
whole organisation in general.
You are policing by consent
and the minute that gets eroded,
it takes a nanosecond to lose
that and a century to regain it.
Dave Wood and his team
were focusing their efforts
on a different part of London.
The intelligence gathered
pointed to corruption
in one branch of
'the flying squad',
the Met's specialist unit
that dealt with armed robbery.
At this time in the 1990s,
the Metropolitan Police
had divided flying squad
operations into four areas of
London and the East London
branch of the flying squad
was based at Rigg Approach.
Rigg Approach had been thought
of as suspect for some time,
and once again, it was decided
in order to get hard evidence
to catch cops red-handed, at it,
that they would have to
mount a sting operation.
Operation Brunei
was interesting.
It had a combination
of players which were
one was a serving cop, two
were former cops and a criminal.
The criminal was
Michael Taverner.
Now, what this individual
wanted to do was to basically
rip off other criminals
and steal their drugs,
and he was trying to
find a way of doing that.
Intelligence was
showing that Taverner
had a corrupt relationship
with a suspect detective
called Kevin Garner, who
had recently left the Met on the
grounds of ill health to avoid
exposure of any wrongdoing.
However, there was another
serving officer that CIB3 knew
whose identity was unknown
and they were desperate to nail.
CIB3 knew that Taverner
was planning a potentially
violent drug theft, but
they didn't know where or
when that would take place.
So, they took matters
into their own hands.
So, the plan that CIB3
came up with is to feed
false intelligence
into the system.
So CIB3, they nurtured
the relationships within
Taverner's group and
fed Intelligence into
Taverner's associates that
there was a stash of cannabis
in a flat in Silvertown,
and that was being
stored by another criminal.
This type of proactive sting
operation was a first for CIB3.
They hoped that the information
would get back to Taverner
and from there he would
engage with Garner and the
unknown serving cop to
coordinate the stealing of the
drugs.
CIB3 had put cameras outside
the flat so they could film
people going in and they'd
put cameras inside the flat and
microphones in order to film
the drugs being found and taken.
With 24/7
surveillance on the flat,
CIB3 had to play
the waiting game.
Their strategy went to plan
as Taverner fed the information
he received into a
Rigg Approach detective
called Terry McGuinness.
So, once Taverner had
heard that from his associates,
he then tasks McGuinness
as a serving cop
who he knew would
then contact Garner.
And then a third player
came in, a guy called Green.
And those three, that trio
was going to be the means
by which Taverner
could steal what he saw,
and thought was a
criminal stash of drugs.
In reality, CIB3 had
hired a flat in Silvertown.
They'd put 80 kilogrammes of
cannabis hidden within the flat,
which was unoccupied.
And they just waited
to see what happened.
They had observations.
The whole of the flat
was bugged with video
and with microphones,
and lo and behold,
the three of them turned up
McGuinness, Garner and Green.
They went tooled up with
weapons because they didn't know
whether there was going
to be anyone in the flat
who would put up a fight
to protect the drugs or not.
So, they went up the stairs.
There was a camera hidden
in an electric plug socket
in the wall that was
filming everything
and picking up the conversation.
And as they searched the
flats looking for the drugs,
they eventually found 80,000
pounds worth of cannabis
in a cabinet.
They put it into it
was already in bags,
and they carried the
bags out of the flat,
picked up on film with
the hidden camera of CIB3
and that was it.
They dispersed and then CIB3
had got the
evidence they wanted.
Taverner and his
associates had taken the bait.
But now CIB3 had a
crucial decision to make.
So, McGuinness, Garner
and Green, they leave the flat,
they've got the 80
kilogrammes of cannabis,
they put it in the
boot of the car.
Operationally, the was - do
we swoop on them now or not?
Now, an operational
decision was made at that time
not to arrest them at the scene.
The reason being for that
is it could quite be a good
explanation for certainly
McGuinness who was
a serving cop, that
actually all he was doing
was he had intelligence
that the drugs were in that flat
and he was taking them
back to the police station
for safekeeping
and investigation.
So, that decision
was to let them run.
CIB3 kept
surveillance on Garner,
McGuinness and Green
and they didn't disappoint.
So, they then leave the scene,
they've got the drugs
in the boot of the car,
and they then take it to a house
which is linked to the
Taverner's network.
That time that was built in by
CIB3, created the opportunity
for that evidence to be
gathered and it was the last
jigsaw puzzle piece that
meant an arrest could be made
and the wiggle room
was completely limited.
The interesting point though
was that 80kg of cannabis
were taken and was
stored and taken by
McGuinness, Green and Garner
but only 56 were retrieved.
And my understanding
is they were never found
what the drugs
that were missing.
On arrest, McGuinness,
Garner and Green
were brought in for questioning.
Green claimed he knew
nothing of the corrupt plan
whilst Garner and McGuinness
would only answer, 'No comment.'
That is until they were
shown the video footage,
CIB3 had captured.
It's not uncommon, which
is the legal right of people
who have been interviewed
to make no comment.
However, in this case,
whilst McGuiness and Garner
made no comment
on early interviews,
once they were shown the video
evidence and the surveillance
of them entering the flat
and taking the drugs away,
the writing was on
the wall for them.
They could not find a
plausible defence to that.
So, how do you reduce your
sentence? You turn supergrass.
So, they both turned
supergrass and between them,
the two of them gave a
lot of information to CIB3
about a lot of different
operations that they'd been
corrupt operations flying squad
officers had been involved in.
They admitted to a total
of 19 offences of corruption,
stretching back to 1991,
ranging from stealing
hundreds of thousands of
pounds to fabricating evidence
following Operation Brunei, the
Met launched Operation Ethiopia,
an investigation into
corruption in the flying squad.
It was the largest investigation
of its kind since the 1970s.
One of the most compelling
cases of corruption
that came out of it
involved a career criminal
called Hector Harvey
and the robbery of
1.4 million pounds from
a security van in 1995.
Hector Harvey's choice of
crime was armed robbery.
He liked to get on the pavement,
he liked to follow Security
express or post office vans
that were loaded with cash.
And in those days, people were
being paid in their pay packet
on a Friday in cash, and that
had to be taken around London.
And Hector Harvey and
his criminal associates
saw opportunities of intervening
as that cash is being
transported across London
to take it for their own ends.
So, they would be on the
pavement armed taking that
money.
The man responsible
for originally tracking down
and arresting Hector Harvey
was a former Metropolitan police
wrestling champion
called Albert Patrick.
Hector Harvey was a
prolific armed robber.
He was identified
after we had arrested a
team and an inside
agent in East Ham.
And we got the word Hector
Selector, that he was a
principal,
he was an organiser.
He was a man on the
bike with a g*n responsible
for the armed robbery
that we were investigating.
An impossible target
drove different vehicles,
a hundred miles an hour
and you would never know
where he was going to be.
So, it was a very challenging
time to put your wits
against Hector Harvey.
We identified him.
Hector Harvey was his
name, Hector Byron Harvey.
And he had previous convictions,
and he had a safe
house in South London.
However, after
investigating Hector Harvey
over the course
of several months,
they eventually tracked him
down to an address in Luton.
Fortunately, we had
enough evidence to
secure a search
warrant, and, in the end,
we had enough
evidence to charge him.
He was arrested, charged,
trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court
convicted, got 15 years.
His barrister says he
wants to speak to me.
I did speak to him, and he said,
'How do I get my
15 years reduced?'
Well, you better tell me
what else you've been up to.
And he did, and I've
registered him as an informant,
and he told us
about what he'd done
and named people
in South London.
For his cooperation
Hector Harvey's sentence
was reduced from 15 to 12 years,
but Hector the Selector,
didn't stop there.
He was now registered informant.
And whilst he was
serving his time,
he managed to
exploit this relationship
to commit perhaps his
most audacious robbery yet.
Hector Harvey was
acting as an informant for
a couple of officers who
are based at Rigg Approach.
And he told them that there
was to be a robbery taking place
and there was to be a dry
run, a rehearsal of the robbery
on a security van that was
going to happen a week before.
And he persuaded the officers
to get him out of prison
to take part in the
dry run the rehearsal.
Now amazingly permission
was given to get Hector Harvey
out of prison to take
part in the dry run.
This could be a film;
you couldn't make it up.
We've got an individual,
Hector Harvey,
who is profound
criminal and he's serving
her Majesty's pleasure in
prison, and he's been involved
in armed robberies
throughout his career.
He managed to
convince the Flying Squad
that if they let him out for a
week, because he'd heard
there was going to be
a post office robbery,
he could go on the dry run,
get the information intelligence
of this robbery, and
then feed that back to
the Flying Squad so
they can intervene.
I mean, is that a
realistic proposition?
But the Flying Squad bought it.
It went up to a very high
level at Scotland Yard itself
before approval
was given for this
very, very unusual, if
not totally rare event.
Having made the decision
to release Hector Harvey
as an informant to gather
intelligence on the dry run,
it wasn't long before
Flying Squad realised,
he had an ulterior motive.
He was indeed allowed
out of prison to take part in
what the handlers had been
told by him was a dry run,
a rehearsal, but instead,
the double cross took place
because in fact, it wasn't a
rehearsal, it was the real
thing.
For some reason, Rigg Approach
did not keep Hector Harvey
under control under
surveillance on the dry run.
They let him out and let him
run loose and what he did do
was a live armed robbery
on a Security Express van
that was taking cash
from a Barclay's branch.
It was about £1.4 million.
The plan that Harvey came up
with, I mean it is film stuff,
it's creative, he wanted to
put fear into an individual
to make sure that
they were so scared
that they would go
along with the plan
of robbing this
van of £1.4 million.
What he did was he had a
relationship with the driver
of the Security Express van,
and he created a situation
where he strapped a
false b*mb around the body
of the driver who
kept that as a secret
from his colleague who also
sat in the front of the cab.
Once the money had been
picked up from Barclays,
the driver said to his
colleague, I need to tell you
this,
my loved one has been
taken hostage by the criminals.
I've got this b*mb
around my body.
We've got microphones
all around me.
So, the criminals who
want to rob this van can hear
anything that we
say, and we discuss.
And if I don't go along with it
and you don't go along with it,
I've got potential of
this b*mb going off,
but more importantly,
I've got a loved one
that's been taken hostage.
That was the fear factor to
put into the other colleague
to ensure that they could
then steal the money.
Hector Harvey on a motorcycle
goes in front of the van.
They go off to a quiet location
and the £1,400,000 is stolen.
So, a large amount of
money and the flying squad
obviously were very, very
embarrassed to say the least,
they'd allowed someone out
of prison to take part in this.
So, the scene is that
Hector Harvey has basically
participated in an armed
robbery while he is on
compassionate leave from prison
for a week, couldn't make it up.
He managed to put, of the 1.4
million, there was a slice up.
So, he needed to give
a payoff to the driver
who was obviously
the inside man.
He gets £200,000.
Hector Harvey, he hides
£47,000 at his mother's house,
he wanted that for when he
eventually was freed from prison
But things didn't go
to plan for Harvey.
He was arrested and questioned
at Edmonton Police Station
and predictably, he denied
knowing that the robbery
was going to happen.
But the officers investigating
were more interested in
where the money was than
the truth behind the robbery.
He was briefed on
what to say in interview
so as to avoid prosecution
and was subject to intimidation
and threats by corrupt
officers who wanted to
get their hands on the cash.
k*ll him or deal with
him in some way.
And in fact, while
he'd been out,
he'd found a grenade
attached to his motorbike
and if he'd started the
motorbike, the pin on the grid
would've come out and
he would've been k*lled.
Hector Harvey had no
choice but to tell detectives
where the stolen cash was.
Unfortunately for him, all
that money that he thought
was going to be distributed
was actually snivelled up
by corrupt cops.
The £200k was divvied up.
The £47k was stolen by
a serving police officer,
and what you had is the corrupt
cops travelling around London
trying to track down
slices of the £1.4 million
with Hector Harvey,
who's the architect of
the armed robbery,
sitting in his prison cell.
Involved in the corrupt
activity was Kevin Garner,
who was responsible for
collecting the stolen cash
and sharing it with the
other corrupt officers.
He confessed to his
part when arrested as part
of Operation Brunei and
gave further information
on corruption at Rigg Approach.
He had stolen the
£200,000 that was being held
for the inside man
at Security Express.
He'd stolen his stash of
money and that money had
been distributed amongst
other flying squads officers.
Terry McGuiness agreed
with what had happened,
and he also gave information.
Garner in particular, had
been particularly friendly
with a Sergeant at the flying
squad called Eamonn Harris
and Garner said, 'Harris,
although just a Detective
Sergeant,
he ran things, he
ran the flying squad.'
There were senior officers above
him, but they didn't matter.
It was Harris who
organised things
and Harris organised
the corruption.
Operation Brunei and the
resulting Operation Ethiopia
resulted in several
flying squad officers being
sent down for corruption.
But it was Hector
Harvey and his audacity
that played an
important role in CIB3,
getting involved and
making the arrests.
The ironic twist of all this
story is that Hector Harvey,
he gets released from prison.
The armed robbery
has not been solved,
because it's been supervised
by corrupt cops one presumes,
he sees that Security Express
are offering a £50,000 reward,
and he thinks, I'll get
some of that action
because he ends up potentially
in his mind, thinking,
'I've committed the robbery,
I've stolen the money,
it's not been solved, and I can
top it up with a £50k reward.'
So, Hector Harvey decided to
approach them and tell them all.
He met a company
director who was himself
an ex-detective who was
horrified at what Hector Harvey
was telling him about
how the flying squad
had taken some of the
money and that there'd been
an inside man on
the job, et cetera.
And he, that's the Security
Express company director,
went to Scotland Yard itself,
spoke to someone high up
and complained bitterly
about what had happened
and how no action
had been taken.
They were furious, so they
then decided they were going
to threaten litigation
against the Met
and the whole story unravelled,
and it was that intelligence
which was able to be fed
into CIB3 and the
revelations by Hector Harvey.
That meant that all the
people who have been corrupt
and have taken
money illegitimately
were going to be
investigated and arrested.
With Garner and McGuinness,
both going down for seven years,
CIB3 had claimed the scalps
of two more bent coppers,
but as they were to find out
their fight against corruption
in the Met had only just begun.
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01x02 - Episode 2
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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.