YOU’RE NICKED!
The leader of a gang of drug dealers stares blankly into the camera as he is cuffed by an armed officer, bringing to an end a sixmonth police surveillance operation.
CCTV had caught his hooded sidekicks huddled around a park bench, dealing heroin and crack cocaine, in a scene straight out of US crime drama The Wire.
But this was Luton, Beds, where the gang was distributing up to £2.7million of Class A drugs a year.
Police officers were watching their every move, and the 24 Hours in Police Custody documentary had unprecedented access to the surveillance operation.
It was the first time a UK police force had let TV cameras show a drugs ring being exposed. In another first, the officer in charge has let himself be identified to talk about the operation.
Det Chief Insp Gary Atkinson, 52, who headed up the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit, says: “My teams work in challenging and dangerous environments. No one knows what we do, effectively we operate in the shadows. “It’s only because I’m coming up to retiring after 30 years, that’s the only reason I’m showing my face.” His team is so secretive, they don’t even reveal their targets to CID. But they let 24 Hours in Police Custody follow Operation Ceto. Filmed between 2016 and 2017, the episode shows his team identifying, disrupting and dismantling the gang, known as the “Kane Line” after its ringleader Kane Lee and the mobile phone used to arrange their drug deals. Nine men and three boys under 18 have been convicted and jailed after police spent months keeping tabs on every gang member, from the ringleaders to the lowliest street dealer. From hours of CCTV footage of the
being became bench behind used used trees clear by as trying a the a single drugs dealers, to mobile dodge hotline. who cameras, phone often Dealers was hid it worked DCI Atkinson, shifts to control a married the dad-of-one, phone. says: “This crime group, they’re so organised they run their crime enterprises like a business. They have one number staffed 24/7, drugs effectively on tap, delivered to the customer. "That drugs line phone is so key to our investigation, because once we’ve got that dealer line, it’s like opening Pandora’s box it gives us everything.” And after a stupid mistake by 23-yearold Kane - when he was caught on CCTV in a phone shop with other gang members – it did just that. DCI Atkinson says: “With him doing that top-up, Kane made a really big mistake, because it’s really good evidence for us to link him to the phone.” APC, who cannot be identified, says: “I just can’t quite believe he was stupid enough to do that.” But he was. It was a rare slip from someone who thought he had separated himself from the entire operation, despite 21 previous convictions linking him to weapons, fraud and drugs. DCI Atkinson says: “Kane is very clever. This is someone who’s well-schooled and well-drilled at what they’re doing.
“It’s like being a CEO of a company. You still exert that influence and power, but you don’t have to be in the workplace, because you’ve got people doing that work for you.”
DCI Atkinson admits it may become harder to dismantle organised gangs using mobile phone data sweeps, which can suck out pictures, texts, contacts and even deleted messages.
But it was something they used to catch out Kane and his girlfriend Joanne McCarthy, a former probation officer.
After getting a warrant to search their home, police found almost £900 of cash and a machete. The cyber crime lab analysed her phone and found pages of deleted messages between the couple.
McCarthy claimed the machete was to “cut down trees in the garden”. She told officers “You’re going on like Kane’s some mastermind criminal. Kane can’t iron his own clothes”.
Although text messages helped to convict Kane Lee, end-to-end encrypted message services such as WhatsApp will make this harder in future.
DCI Atkinson admits: “If you use endto-end encryption it’s not accessible to us, it’s not accessible to anyone. There are challenges, but we keep adapting.”
Not satisfied with catching Kane Lee, the team believed they had identified the person supplying the gang’s drugs – a man known as Victor.
Kane and his brother Ladean Lee, 21, were heard shouting between their cells: “Why haven’t they bagged V?” It did not take police long to “bag” V, real name Ryan Kirkpatrick.
DCI Atkinson says: “The criminals we deal with generally think they’re untouchable. But, it’s all about the connections, it’s like a spider’s web, making those links between gang members. Once we’ve got what we need, we take them down.”
Lee Kane got eight years after admitting conspiracy to supply Class A drugs. Admitting the same charge, Ladean Lee got six years and eight months, Derrick Fray, 39, got five years and four months, Ryan Kirkpatrick, 34, got five years and four months, Ryan Paul, 20, got three years and Ewan Raeside, 20, was jailed for two years and eight months,
Lewis Stansfield, 22, got three years after admitting supplying Class A drugs, as did Ryan Bowen, 28. Luke Hammond, 20, admitted supplying Class A drugs and possession with intent to supply drugs and got three years’ jail.
Another three youths, who cannot be named for legal reasons, also received sentences. Joanne McCarthy was found in possession of criminal property and sentenced to a 12-month community order with an electronic tag.
DCI Atkinson is now ready to retire after three decades in the job.
He says: “Nobody falls into covert policing. I think everybody enters that world knowing exactly how demanding that is, professionally and privately. Obviously, it has a massive impact on people’s family lives and home lives. I don’t think I have got too many on the team on their first marriage still.”
He admits he never feels sorry for the youngsters who get caught up in crime.
He says: “These young lads, they’ve been sold a dream and they’ve been sucked into this career path early.
“If they’ve made a conscious decision to involve themselves in criminality, if they’ve made that choice from free will, then I don’t have any sympathy at all.
“It’s not just about the drug dealing, there are so many people affected by their activity, the wider community.
“It has a knock-on affect into the health service and the social service and the probation service and, of course, law enforcement and the local police.
“So I think it’s fantastic that these guys have been taken out.
“While they’re off the streets, I mean, whilst they’re sat in their prison cells, they’ve got a long time to think about it.”
24 Hours in Police Custody, Channel 4, Monday, 10pm.
I think it is fantastic that these guys have all been taken out DCI GARY ATKINSON SURVEILLANCE OFFICER