Dirty money, bent coppers and the taint of corruption that shames our police

Officers manipulated by clever old-school villains

IT IS almost two centuries since the father of modern policing Robert Peel laid down the so-called Peelian Principles on which his new ethical police force would be founded. There are only three and of those just one relates to crime. The other two demand that officers earn the trust of the people they seek to police by exercising power openly and honestly, and that they are accountable for whatever happens afterwards.

After last week’s revelations regarding the Metropolitan Police’s handling of the Stephen Lawrence murder 20 years ago, I wonder if we should give those principles a crime number because they’ve suffered serious injury.

Forgive my anger, but I worked on the 1999 Macpherson Report which followed the Lawrence killing. I gave evidence which pointed to institutional corruption in the Met being at the heart of the case. It was evidence that Sir William Macpherson chose to dismiss because in his opinion, institutional racism was to blame.

The Met didn’t like the sound of either but decided to plead guilty to institutional racism, believing it was the lesser of the two charges. So I do feel vindicated by the announcement this week of a new inquiry into police corruption, centred on the Lawrence case.

But I am also deeply concerned, and, yes, ashamed that my investigations into the dirty money and risky favours which tie bent coppers to the criminal underworld were not enough to wrench the two apart all those years ago.

It matters, not because of my professional ego, but because it’s meant a further 20 years of a corrupt knot of officers believing they can operate above and beyond the law.

It’s a truth nobody wants to acknowledge. So let me tell you about some of examples of corruption I have come across in my years investigating and writing about big, box office villains and the men who set out to catch them but somehow lose their way.

One detective earned tens of thousands of pounds selling confidential information, including witness statements to known criminals to feed his drug habit. He’d been encouraged to take drugs while working undercover and got hooked.

Then there was the occasion detectives raided the home of a ‘high-echelon criminal’ believed to be involved in the ‘importation and distribution of controlled drugs’ in London. Officers found a five-page printout that indicated two serving Met police officers were on his payroll.

I know of one detective approached by a colleague who told him not to pursue a suspected drug dealer because he was a ‘nice fella’. The corrupt cop told him: ‘If you don’t touch him he’ll help you…’ It was precisely this attitude which allegedly helped the Stephen Lawrence suspects evade arrest for so long.

Police corruption cuts across every rank of ‘the job’ today. I know of beat constables who accept a ‘drink’ for looking the other way and senior officers who bury evidence to protect themselves and their colleagues.

And these are men who operate in uniform with their rank and number visible to all – stripped of those the stakes are higher. I know of covert police who have actively perverted the course of justice by smearing the reputations of victims, losing or withholding crucial evidence and then closing ranks to cover the identity of killers and criminals.

Partly it’s the macho side of policing which is to blame. The ‘them and us’ attitude towards certain members of the general public doesn’t help, either.

On top of that, some officers – often university educated – have naively allowed themselves to be manipulated by clever old-school villains. The dilemma for the police is that in the 21st century they need to be streetwise but not to the point of being criminally inclined. They don’t always get the balance right.

We all remember the worst of Life On Mars policing. The notorious bent coppers I knew back in the 1970s and 1980s may be long gone, dead or retired to a shady life in the sunshine on a criminal costa, but their attitudes prevail.

THAT’S what could have been stopped by the evidence I gave to the Macpherson Inquiry. I worked on the report after my biography of gangster Kenneth Noye alerted Macpherson to my ‘specialist knowledge’ of links between Noye and the family of one of the Lawrence suspects.

Noye – in prison at the time for his role in handling some of the gold from the Brink’s-Mat robbery – had even phoned one officer connected to the Lawrence case from jail to ask him ‘to ease off’ the Lawrence investigation.

Now that was a golden opportunity to do something, as solid and as bright and shiny as the Brink’s- Mat bullion. You had a criminal kingpin able to pull in a favour from behind bars on a murder case which stunned the nation. Yet they missed it. ‘We all knew about racism in “the job” but the whiff of corruption was considered much more damaging,’ said one ex-officer.

Police corruption even threatens to taint the newly formed National Crime Agency, which has been accused of operating as an ‘official secret police’.

Why was No 10 adviser Patrick Rock apparently tipped off about his impending arrest three weeks before it occurred? National Crime Agency officers have continually refused to even confirm or deny Rock’s arrest, related to alleged child abuse images.

Since being formed in October last year, the NCA has only publicly disclosed a small proportion of the 350 people arrested. Many believe this level of secrecy encourages corruption inside the police.

Between 2009 and 2011, almost 50 Metropolitan Police officers were suspended for corruption, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act. One of the most highprofile cases was that of Ali Dizaei, a commander dismissed after he was jailed for misconduct in a public office and perverting the course of justice.

Another high profile example of misconduct is PC Simon Harwood, who was sacked after he was found guilty of breaching standards in connection with the death of newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests.

How does all this fit into those Peelian Principles of trust and integrity and transparency and accountability? More to the point, what can we do to put it right?

This new inquiry is a start. Now the crooked police practices that helped the Lawrence killers evade the law for so long will be finally exposed. And the work begun there must continue until we come full circle to where Sir Robert Peel began 200 years ago.