Pubdate: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 Source: Scotsman (UK) Contact: Jim Wilson CALL FOR GLASGOW RAIDS INQUIRY Exclusive: New Claims Of Misconduct By Drugs Squad Drugs squad officers already accused of lying under oath were linked last night to a series of raids that prompted claims of planted evidence, brutality and perjury. Scotland's most senior law officer has been urged to investigate new claims of criminal misconduct surrounding the activities of the Strathclyde Police squad in the early 1990s. Concern now centres on three raids mounted within a few months of each other and involving several of the officers already suspended by the force after being accused of lying to cover up the violent beating of a suspect. Their suspension came after Gerald Rae won 3,000 compensation in January after claiming drugs squad officers attacked him with baseball bats and framed him during a raid at his home in October 1990. The allegations of violence were identical to those levelled by another suspect who also sued the force for an alleged beating inflicted in a raid a few weeks earlier. A third man arrested in a different operation at about the same time was cleared of dealing charges after his young daughter told a jury how she had seen police planting drugs in his home. The procurator-fiscal in Glasgow is already investigating the officers' alleged perjury during Rae's civil action. Menzies Campbell, legal affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, called last night for the Crown inquiry to be widened and personally supervised by the Lord Advocate. "Claims of this kind always raise substantial issues of public confidence in the police and only the highest standards of probity will ensure respect for the forces of law and order," he said. Rae, 39, and another drugs suspect, William Dennison, 40, who was jailed for 11 years after being convicted of dealing, sued Strathclyde Police after claiming to have been beaten up by officers in the raids in late 1990. In a third raid, so far unreported, the drugs squad searched the home of John Paul Muir, 38, in Milton, Glasgow, allegedly finding more than 92,000 in a holdall, a bag of cocaine and a large quantity of cannabis under the floorboards. But, after hearing Muir's eight-year-old daughter Natalie claim to have seen an officer planting drugs, the jury at his trial in May 1991 took just 30 minutes to reject the evidence of a series of police officers and find the dealing charges against him not proven. Natalie had described watching an officer take something from a bag during the raid and put it under the floorboards. She told the High Court in Glasgow: "I couldn't see what it was but he was shining his torch under the floorboards and was kidding about." Yesterday Natalie, now a teenager, repeated her claims, saying the police officer was unaware that she was watching him during the raid at the family's home in Ashgill Road. "My head wasn't turned towards them but I was looking sideways at him," she said. In May 1991, at the time of Muir's trial, Detective Inspector John Pollock, who led many of the raids mounted by the drugs squad at the time - including the operation against Rae - was transferred to uniformed duties. Rae, like Dennison and Muir, has criminal convictions for serious offences linked to drugs and violence, but every charge linked to the raid on his home in 1990 - where heroin with a street value of 15,000 was allegedly found - was either dropped by the prosecution or rejected by the jury at his trial at the High Court in Glasgow in June 1991. After the verdict, the trial judge, Lord McLuskey, attacked the case against Rae and, asking the Lord Advocate to investigate, said there had "never been one iota of evidence" for one of the most serious dealing charges against him. Mr Pollock and the other officers involved were transferred out of the squad in 1991, despite an internal inquiry into Rae's claims of violence finding no evidence to support disciplinary proceedings or criminal charges against them. In January, Lord Marnoch awarded Rae 3,000 after hearing how two of his neighbours witnessed the raid at his flat in Glasgow's South Side and, hearing his screams of agony, dialled 999 believing a murder was being committed. During his trial and subsequent civil action, the officers denied Rae was beaten. In the civil action brought against the Strathclyde force by Dennison, the judge rejected his claims that police beat him up while he was handcuffed, naked, and lying on the floor, praising the officers' evidence as "credible and reliable". The officers suspended in January were: Inspectors Pollock, Frank Thom and Ian McBain; Detective Sergeant Katrona Nicholson, Detective Constable James Dinnen and PCs Andrew Caie and John Kelly. No-one was available at the Crown Office last night. A spokesman for Strathclyde Police declined to comment on the fresh concerns. He confirmed that the seven officers remained suspended.