The police station in Edmonton is a forbidding red-brick building bristling with radio masts and surrounded by high walls. It is an imposing presence, glaring down on a row of Turkish restaurants and supermarkets on the other side of Fore Street in the outer reaches of North London. The station foyer, the only place accessible to the public, is little bigger than a cupboard where locals report their losses, complaints and woes to officers through a window. The impression is more of a fortress than the friendly notion of neighbourhood policing that British forces are desperate to foster. This station is at the centre of one of the most sensitive corruption investigations the Metropolitan Police has faced for decades. [continues 666 words]
Metropolitan Police officers subjected suspects to waterboarding, according to allegations at the centre of a major anti-corruption inquiry, The Times has learnt. The torture claims are part of a wide-ranging investigation which also includes accusations that officers fabricated evidence and stole suspects' property. It has already led to the abandonment of a drug trial and the suspension of several police officers. However, senior policing officials are most alarmed by the claim that officers in Enfield, North London, used the controversial CIA interrogation technique to simulate drowning. Scotland Yard is appointing a new borough commander in Enfield in a move that is being seen as an attempt by Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner, to enforce a regime of "intrusive supervision". [continues 230 words]
A UKP40 billion underworld economy is dominated by homegrown criminals, with at least 27 "Mr Bigs" running their empires from inside British jails, The Times has learnt. An intelligence map drawn up by the leading police expert on organised crime identifies more than 1,000 active criminal networks and shows that gangland is still controlled by British families, despite the influx of crime syndicates from Eastern Europe and South-East Asia over the past decade. In a separate operation, investigators have identified 27 crime bosses running networks from prison cells. Although they are all in jail, Terry Adams, Kenneth Noye, Brian Brendon Wright, Brian Gunn and Curtis Warren are being monitored closely. [continues 858 words]
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, should go further than this week's legal downgrading of cannabis and decriminalise or legalise the drug, according to a survey for The Telegraph. More than 50 per cent of those questioned believed the sale and possession of cannabis - to be downgraded from a Class B drug to Class C on Thursday - should no longer be a criminal offence. The YouGov survey found 28 per cent favoured decriminalising the drug, making it a minor offence, while 23 per cent wanted full legalisation. [continues 349 words]
A WOMAN who watched helplessly as three of her four daughters became heroin addicts said yesterday that she was afraid the drug would kill her youngest child. Theresa Dodd, a nurse, spoke of her despair, anger and pain over what has happened to her children, all of whom are now aged over 18. Mrs Dodd and her husband, Charles, a senior partner in a London solicitors' firm, raised four girls and sent them to good schools in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, a place whose name is a byword for Home Counties' respectability. [continues 701 words]
A DRUG trafficker who dressed as an airline pilot to smooth his passage through customs was jailed for 10 years yesterday for his involvement in deals valued at 5.8 million pounds. Robert McLean, 49, had a false Civil Aviation Authority identification card, wore a pilot's uniform and carried a briefcase, maps and headphones when passing through airports. Known as Capt Bob McLean to his relatives and friends, he lived in a 500,000 pounds home at Ringwood, Hants, and owned three flats in the exclusive harbourside area of Poole, Dorset. [continues 208 words]
THREE friends who came into money separately and shared a house died within six months of each other after becoming heroin users. Christopher Lea, 29, Marcus Rhodes, 24, and Justin Thacker, 23, from the fishing port of Brixham, Devon, squandered their wealth on drugs. Lea inherited pounds 250,000 and the house in Temperance Street where the three lived after his parents died in a motorbike accident. Thacker, a chef who had worked as a bar manager at a golf club, had won pounds 22,000 compensation after being injured in an accident at a holiday camp. Rhodes, who had inherited and spent almost pounds 50,000, was the first of the three to die. He was found hanging, having committed suicide, at Brixham in May last year. [continues 108 words]
A holiday flight was carrying 24 members of four different smuggling gangs trying to bring half a million contraband cigarettes into Britain, a court was told. Customs officers could not find enough cells to detain all the smugglers arrested leaving a flight from Tenerife. The 19 men and five women, all from Darlington and Doncaster, were stopped as they walked through the green channel at Exeter airport in January 1998. Customs officers found 25,000 packets of cigarettes, value at UKP68,000, in their luggage. [continues 95 words]
A judge has condemned the "socially corrosive and destructive" methods employed by Customs and Excise in investigating a pounds 50 million cocaine smuggling racket. Mr Justice Turner delivered a scathing attack on Customs as he threw out charges against Brian Doran and Kenneth Togher, the alleged masterminds of the drugs operation. The judge was appalled to discover that Customs officers had illegally bugged hotel rooms to gain evidence against Doran and Togher. The officers then lied on oath in court, claiming that they had permission from hotel managers to put recording devices in bedrooms. Other evidence they presented was falsified. [continues 445 words]
A WOMAN who claimed to have earned six-figure sums while working as an advertising executive with Saatchi and Saatchi was jailed yesterday after resorting to fraud to finance a drug habit. Stephanie Whitworth, 45, was said to have enjoyed the trappings of a successful career but had "fallen from a great height" and became addicted to crack cocaine. Judge Simon Darwall Smith, at Gloucester Crown Court, told her that her criminal behaviour stemmed from the "hedonistic lifestyle" she had enjoyed during the 1980s. [continues 514 words]
A secret cannabis farm has been established with the support of the Government to investigate the medicinal uses of the illegal drug. Thousands of cannabis plants are being grown in large glasshouses, with humidity, light and temperature controls, at an undisclosed location in south-east England. The 10 million pound project is being carried out behind tall fences, amid tight security. GW Pharmaceuticals, the first company licensed by the Government to cultivate and possess large quanities of cannabis, has been advised on security by the Home Office and Special Branch. [continues 150 words]
