Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
The Sweeney’s boss: We’ll use old school ways to nick today’s high-tech criminals
For 100 years, The Flying Squad has been getting the better of Britain’s most notorious villains. The elite officers of “The Sweeney” remain crooks’ most feared adversaries – and as the Met’s most celebrated branch celebrates its centenary, bosses warn that will not change.
Det Chief Supt Mick Gallagher said his officers will continue using old school methods to catch high-tech crooks.
The detective said: “We have to remain open so that we don’t resign past tactics and methods to the past. Sometimes it’s often worth revisiting something that worked very successfully.
“It might be that we have to start re-establishing some of the older ways that we used to work and not be so heavily reliant on technology. If encryption, for example, is going to start causing a problem.”
The London-based branch was formed as the First World War neared its end by veteran detective Frederick Wensley.
It initially had two horse- drawn wagons patrolling the streets with officers hiding inside, ready to pounce. It became known for action-packed take-downs of armed robbers known as a “pavement ambush” and got the name Flying Squad because it operated across London without adhering to borough policing boundaries.
The unit was immortalised when it was portrayed in gritty 1970s TV series The Sweeney, starring John Thaw and Dennis Waterman. The nickname is an abbreviation of Sweeney Todd, Cockney rhyming slang for Flying Squad.
Today it has 120 officers at two main bases – soon to be 141 as its remit expands to deal with kidnap.
Armed robbery remains its key focus, with moped smash-and-grab raids and deliberate gas explosions of cash machines both recent trends.
Much of its success has come from building up a wide network of informants. Its swooping eagle emblem is
symbolic of the way its officers swoop on criminals with speed.
Many of the most dramatic raids of recent times were carried out by the squad. In 2004, its plain-clothes officers nabbed a gang at Heathrow Airport trying to steal £100million in gold bullion. Our exclusive front page showed a cuffed crook sat with a rueful expression, summing up his surprise at being caught.
Retired Flying Squad boss Barry Phillips, who led the surveillance operation that got the arrests, said: “They would have got more than £100million. In doing that, it drove criminal activity right down. We were watching them for a long time in a van. We were all waiting for the lorry with the bullion on board. It was months of work, developing intelligence.”
Flying Squad officers arrested 17 of the 19 thieves responsible for the 1963 Great Train Robbery. The squad investigated the infamous 1983 Brink’s-mat security depot robbery and the 1987 safe deposit raid in Knightsbridge.
And, in the biggest operation in Flying Squad history, it foiled a plot to steal jewels from a diamond exhibition at the Millennium Dome in 2000.
In November that year, five robbers armed with smoke bombs, ammonia and a nail gun, crashed into the dome with a stolen JCB excavator and smashed through to the vault.
They had planned to escape on the River Thames by using a speedboat. Some of the officers were positioned behind a dummy wall, and others were dressed as cleaners with their firearms hidden in black bin bags, or rubbish bins, along with officers in dome staff uniforms.
A further 60 armed Flying Squad officers were stationed around the Thames, and 20 on the river itself, to hamper any escape attempts.
The squad also investigated the £14million Hatton Garden safety deposit heist in 2015.
Crime is changing but crooks using computer skills to stay one step ahead of The Sweeney had better think again.
DCS Gallagher said: “In the fastchanging technological age it’s a challenge to keep up to speed with how things are developing.
“The Flying Squad rightly remains at the forefront. The challenge is never ending, they shape shift and we have to in order to meet that.”
Criminals shape shift and we also have to in order to meet that MICK GALLAGHER BOSS OF THE FLYING SQUAD