Pubdate: Thu, 18 May 2000
Source: London Evening Standard (UK)
Copyright: 2000 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/
Author: Philip Nettleton and Keith Dovkants

DEATH OF A WEST END DRUG DEN

The mission was clearly defined and everyone knew the risks. Inside a
heavily fortified building on Charing Cross Road, Yardie gangsters stood
guard over a highly organised mass market in drugs. The building was
protected by a network of security systems including closed-circuit
television cameras and look-outs posted in the surrounding streets supplied
with mobile phones to raise the alarm.

Doors were backed up by steel shutters; others were filled in with concrete
blocks. Reports indicated that the drug gang "soldiers" were armed, some
with guns, others with machetes and electric cattle prods. The mission was
to halt the drug dealing and arrest the gang leaders. It looked like mission
impossible.

The full account of how Scotland Yard planned and executed the raid on what
was believed to be London's biggest drug den has been revealed for the first
time as individuals arrested in the operation are convicted and sentenced.
It is a story of meticulous planning, daring and, above all, courage.

It begins with reports of an extraordinary criminal business based in the
old EMI recording studios in the West End's Tin Pan Alley. Scotland Yard had
already been alerted when Evening Standard reporters investigated claims
that drugs were being sold by dealers backed up by Yardie gunmen. The
building in Charing Cross Road was a warren of soundproofed rooms where some
of Britain's best known stars once recorded their hits. In the summer of
1998, it was being rented by a sinister couple who were running a club, the
Backbeat, as a front for drug dealing on an astonishing scale.

Drug Squad officers could hardly believe the information they were
receiving. According to one estimate, 50 kilograms of cannabis were being
sold every week, mostly to youngsters who crowded the place. Between 5.30pm
and 3am there would be 300 to 400 revellers who paid UKP2 for entry. In
rooms labelled "Social" and "Chill Out" people openly used drugs. Through a
heavy fog of cannabis smoke people danced to heavy techno and jungle music;
others played pool; in a "smoking room" up to 100 people sat on the floor
passing joints around. More than UKP120,000 had been spent on general
improvements including a dedicated sports bar with large screens showing
football matches. In the basement packaged bags of drugs were carefully
weighed before being sent upstairs to be sold.

They were passed out through a small hole in an internal wall by an unseen
person who revealed only two fingers in a surgical glove to hand out the
package and take a UKP10 or UKP20 note. The clientele came from all over
Europe - the club was advertised in student magazines and signs inside were
written in four languages.

Detectives set up a surveillance unit in a building across the road and
undercover officers infiltrated the club membership, sold for UKP2. They
learned that the operation was run by Maryann Quinn, a remarkable woman in
her late thirties who boasted of a legal background as a solicitor. She
enforced her strict regime with her boyfriend, former heavyweight boxer
Floyd Alexander, 40, and up to 20 Yardies. These "soldiers" were
extraordinarily loyal and called Quinn "mum". If anyone crossed her they
reacted swiftly and brutally. On one occasion they stuck a cattle prod into
a difficult customer, sending electric shocks through his body.

The police believed a network of outside drug dealers was also targeting the
club membership and a spin-off of the illegal activity was a rise in crime
in the Tin Pan Alley neighbourhood. Senior police officers called a
high-level meeting to decide how to combat the drug den threat. From this
meeting emerged the plan that was to become Operation Legrand.

It hinged on the element of surprise. Five months of surveillance and
infiltration had taught police that the Backbeat club was set up like a
fortress. Even the floors were reinforced with steel. The idea of smashing a
way in with sledgehammers was quickly dismissed. The police decided to take
a lesson from the masters of mission impossible, the SAS.

In November 1988, officers of the Yard's SO 19 specialist firearms squad and
the City police's tactical firearms unit were called together and briefed on
what was to become the biggest armed police operation yet mounted. The plan
was to hit the club in three waves, two from ground level and one from the
roof.

On 30 November, the day before the raid, armed units were secretly slipped
into position around the building while snipers took up position on the
roofs of surrounding business premises. No one knew whether the Yardie
soldiers on duty would make a fight of it. Every officer was issued with
body armour.

At 3pm on 1 December, a final briefing was held at an army barracks in north
London. Then Operation Legrand was put into action. Two articulated lorries
drove slowly through central London; one came to a halt in St Giles High
Street near Tottenham Court Road Tube, the other appeared to break down
outside the Backbeat club. The lookouts watched with idle interest as the
lorry ground to a halt. Then, at a pre-arranged radio signal, all hell broke
loose.

A unit of SO19 men, all in body armour and balaclavas, swooped down from the
roof of the old EMI building high above the street. They abseiled 30 feet on
ropes and kicked their way through the upper floor windows. As two waves of
officers - 120 armed police in all - poured out of the lorries, others
joined them from hiding places to storm the front and back of the building.
A series of explosions shook the street - the SO 19 men were throwing stun
grenades into the rooms guarded by the Yardies.

Their Heckler and Koch submachineguns were at the ready as they started
rounding up club workers and customers. A total of 380 other officers joined
the operation as detectives dashed through the warren of rooms hunting that
their main quarry, codenamed Florida and Utah.

Alexander - Utah - was arrested in an office. Quinn - Florida - was picked
up later at her home in Brixton. Inside three minutes the biggest armed
operation in British police history was over. A hundred people had been
detained and Samurai swords, machetes and UKP125,000 in cash were among
2,000 items confiscated. More than 90,000 bags of drugs were found along
with 21kg of cannabis.

No one had fired a shot. Judge Ader, at Snaresbrook Crown Court, later
commended the police officers who took part. Quinn and Alexander were both
jailed for five years for conspiracy to supply cannabis. A total of
UKP750,000 in assets was seized.

Det Supt Lewis Benjamin, one of the officers in charge of the investigation,
said: "Quinn was the brains, Floyd the muscle. They were selling vast
quantities of dope but it is known that if you wanted to get hard drugs
there was an arrangement where you could get them from floating dealers
inside and outside.

"Quinn thought at worst she would get arrested for a lesser charge like
possession. But we didn't do it like that. The aim was to arrest them, shut
the club and improve the quality of life around the area which was rapidly
deteriorating."

This, police say, is what has happened. Since Operation Legrand crime levels
around Tin Pan Alley have fallen by half.

Mastermind Chasing UKP1m By 40

Maryann Quinn was ruthless in her exercise of power as matriarch of the
Backbeat drug den. With her faithful band of Yardie soldiers and bouncers no
one dared question her. Not even Floyd Alexander, known in Yardie circles as
Tank. The former amateur boxer and hard man was her business partner but it
was she who gave the orders.

Quinn was driven by money. She surrounded herself with it - when police
raided her home they found UKP78,000 in UKP10 notes hidden about the house.
There was also UKP7,500 in coins from the club's pool tables. She called
this "loose change".

The club was turning over UKP3 million a year. On a good night it took
UKP35,000 and profits were running at UKP100,000 a month. Alexander, who
like her has Jamaican roots, had once been her lover but this did not stop
her skimming off most of the profits.

"She was taking the lion's share," said Det Supt Lewis Benjamin, who
described her as "a very strong character and very devious". He added: "She
had a BMW, several bank accounts and had paid off her mortgage. She had
leases on numerous houses, flats and business property. She wanted to make a
million and get out."

Quinn was very close to doing this thanks to her shrewd business brain. She
bought three Italian-made reinforced doors at a cost of UKP6,000 each in an
attempt to foil a police raid and she supervised UKP120,000 worth of
improvements at the club.

The interior of the club was rough and ready, but Quinn spent thousands of
pounds on her office. She was taking flying lessons and at one point put up
UKP5,000 surety for a man accused of cocaine dealing. She made frequent
visits to a Cash and Carry shop to buy large amounts of drinks and cigarette
papers for rolling joints. When police raided the club they found 20,000
jumbo packets of cigarette papers.

Quinn kept two rottweilers at her Brixton house and surrounded herself with
Yardie toughs. According to detectives they served her loyally and even
bought her a birthday cake. One of her protectors, a Yardie called Keggs,
became her lover and she bore his child. This did not stop her betraying
him. At Quinn and Alexander's joint trial they claimed that Keggs was the
ringleader of the operation and that they were both forced to take part by
the Jamaican gangsters she was employing. The jury convicted Alexander but
could not reach a decision on whether Quinn was also guilty of conspiring to
supply drugs.

At a retrial in March this year she claimed that she was not only forced by
the Yardies to turn a blind-eye to the drug dealing but also that Alexander
was abusing and threatening her. She also said she was suffering clinical
depression following the death of her father about five years ago. Her daily
routine was to get-up at 11am and leave for the "office" at about midday in
her gleaming BMW. Having made sure supplies were in for the night she would
either shop or attend an ante-natal clinic.

"This was an organised enterprise by two people who knew what they were
doing," said Det Supt Benjamin. "Neither of them got involved in crimes they
could easily be arrested for - they were a lot cleverer than that. There is
a market for drugs and by doing it in a club, feigning legality, they didn't
think they would get caught."

Quinn had no police record, apart from a conviction for minor cheque book
fraud in her early twenties. Her past baffles detectives. She is believed to
be of Portuguese-Jamaican origin, but apart from using the names Da Costa
and Pinto, there is nothing to confirm her background.

According to police Quinn's plan was to amass as much money as she could by
the time she was 40 next year then quit drug dealing. She wanted to move to
New York where she had an investment portfolio. Her 40th birthday will now
be spent in the mother and baby wing of Holloway prison. She will serve the
first 18 months of her five-year sentence there.
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