I Was Undercover In The UK's Toughest Drug Gang | Minutes With | @LADbible

he shut the door stood on the toilet and looked over the top of the cubicle and said what's this as soon as he said that the door burst open again and these four hooded figures came in and they started walking around me slowly and as they were walking around me one of them would punch me headbutt me as this was going on the guy was looking down at me asking me questions and i became convinced that i wasn't going to leave there in one piece [Music] i sort of fell into undercover work and and sort of drugs obsessive policing really because there was the biggest moral panic in the united kingdom about drugs going on and that moral panic was about crack cocaine because the newspapers had been publishing these stories for uh for years really about the crack epidemic in the united states and what a catastrophe it's going to be as soon as it hits the streets of britain the government instructed all the police forces to prioritize above anything else the investigation of heroin and crack cocaine above anything domestic violence or any other kind of thing and so that's how i ended up being given 20 pounds and pointed to this blue terraced house door in the city of derby and knocking on that door and asking to to buy my first uh deal of of drugs for the police was it scary my you know the first time yeah my my um my stomach was doing some assaults you know i i was i was certainly nervous but um i didn't give myself chance to get scared particularly and to be fair it wasn't that difficult because this guy didn't know me i just knocked on this door and he said to me um who are you then you're not a student are you innate students and at that moment i thought hang on i don't know what i am i haven't made up a cover story or anything so i thought well that'll do i says yeah yeah i'm a student and this woman behind him said god is he stupid you've just told him you hate students but then he laughed and says yeah but what fool would i admit to being one now um and so he says yes what do you want then and i love it i said i have a 20 pound stone it was actually not difficult that day not really because he didn't know that the police were doing using that tactic but of course he went to jail and then everyone suddenly did know that the police were doing were using new tricks and so in order to have a successful operation from that point onwards it had to take a lot more effort and constantly adapting you're now a undercover narcotics policeman what does a day look like the beginning of an operation for the first few weeks i would be spending time building my legend making the connections working out who it is that i can use to best introduce me further up the ladder you know who's got those contacts it's all about finding out who knows who and who and who's useful but in terms of practically what i did for the start of the day well i realized that it was particularly useful for me to dress down and actually look like i fit in with the street community you know the people who are homeless or living in squats the people who are really living on the edge of edge of society if i look like them i could fit in with them quicker what happens to you in the field if you're offered some drugs well i mean there were occasions when i had to use drugs undercover there were a small amount of times when i used cannabis but it's just cannabis isn't it [Music] there was a time when i had to use amphetamine um and that's because this person who'd given it to me they i made this really stupid mistake by basically making myself out to be a connoisseur of amphetamines and i'm clearly not but this person gave me this this amphetamine and he says wow i bet you've never had anything like this and i thought no how right you are but i had this moment of reticence on my face which i knew he picked up on i saw this split second of suspicion at my reticence so i thought well i'm going to have to pull war throw water on this fire of suspicion instantly to put it out which meant i had to enthusiastically dip my finger in this bag and show willing and this uh this amphetamine in this bag this pink toxic looking goo in this little sealy bag uh would turn out to be incredibly strong it was 40 pure as opposed to what was normally five percent pure at that time in the market and it smelt like the the urine from a glue sniffing cat you know that sort of uriney toxic smell and i sort of almost felt the mouthfuls falling on my tongue as i had it and because i didn't have any tolerance it meant i was completely out of it i was absolutely destroyed and it was not a comfortable experience at all i knew enough about it i wasn't going to have an overdose but it was well beyond a comfortable dose i wasn't very anxious indeed and so i had to get driven home and i didn't actually sleep properly for three nights didn't sleep at all for the first two nights that's how strong it was mind you my house has never been so tidy i can tell you could you talk us through your biggest case yeah i suppose um my biggest case is that against the burger bar boys in northampton this operation was sold to me i was talked into it and they said woodsy we need you to do this job because this gang are using sexual violence to intimidate people they're gang raping people you know they're doing all the normal kind of gangster stuff kidnappings maimings and all of that kind of thing but they're all you know that just for reputation building they're using sexual violence and there were six of them that taken over the heroin and crack cocaine supply in northampton using violence to do that one of them was implicated and i saw some of the intelligence on this one of them was implicated in seven different murders in birmingham and he was uh apparently responsible for sourcing the machine guns for the murder of leticia shakespeare and charmaine harris i think in 2004 it'll be i think and so they were a really dangerous gang and so i thought okay i need to work and and try and catch these people and you know up until that point i was buying heroin off people but what i would do is i would moan and complain saying it's not the bags aren't big enough it's not good enough i need a hook up right to the prop to the right to the main people you know and eventually managed to get that introduction and i'll never forget that the day i i got that intro um i was taken to where they were sort of holding court their sort of local headquarters in the snooker club right in the center of northampton straight into the uh the gents toilets and i was stood there for a few minutes and the guy who was going to be introducing me was looking terrified over to my left and then the door burst open and this hooded figure walked in and he went into the cubicle he shut the door stood on the toilet and looked over the top of the cubicle and said what's this as soon as he said that the door burst open again and these four-hundred figures came in and they started walking around me slowly and as they were walking around me one of them would punch me head-butt me i think it was a head butt on the side of the head right on my ear so it really hurt and then a few seconds later one would would punch me in the ribs or push me in the other and then that would on the other side the other one would punch me and as as this was going on the guy was looking down at me asking me questions and then asking my mate questions and then rephrasing the same question trying to catch me out and he was asking how long we'd known each other and uh and because my mate had made me learn a cover story to say that we'd known each other for much longer which is really confusing when you're an undercover cop who've got you've got a cover story and just had to learn a new one on top of it and i became convinced that i wasn't going to leave there in one piece because it was hurting and i knew their capacity for extreme violence and i just thought it was just going to explode in any moment anyway eventually he said to me alright then what do you want and i looked up at him said i love one on one please polite as you like and uh and i handed him 40 pounds and he gave me a 0.4 of heroin and a 0.4 of crack and that was the most important moment for the operation really because we exchanged phone numbers he put me in his memory and from that day onwards i started gathering evidence of conspiracy against the whole gang and i bought from all of them and i carried on doing for for months and more than any other operation certainly from that point onwards i was constantly in fear when i was operating when i was out on the streets constantly in fear of immediate violence that it could happen at any time because they wouldn't they'd never let up on the the intimidation and just that sense of imminent violence the development of that kind of undercover work and the procedures developed really quickly although there was no training for it for the first four years at all if i wanted to if if a constabulary or or special operations team wanted to to use an operative then i would be loaned to them that team would have to be completely cocooned completely separate from normal policing operations totally separate and in fact by the end of the 1990s before any operation started that team would be briefed they would be told you must not ask the undercover operative their real name you must not ask them where they're from and you will be disciplined if you do now the reason for that is to protect my safety and the reason that they had to do that with fellow cops is because it didn't take too long to realize that corruption was a massive problem with drugs investigations that information leaked and obviously information leaking when you've got an undercover undercover operative on the ground that's potentially extremely dangerous potentially fatal so those systems were put in place to protect my anonymity so which it became a very lonely place really because i was using the same pseudonym to the problematic drug users and the gangsters on the street as i was to my police colleagues no one even knew my real name and that was to protect my safety which i can tell is not particularly reassuring if that's the best they can do for systems to protect you would it be fair to say that the police accept that there is internal corruption the fact that those systems are in place is in itself proof that the corruption exists there is only a need for those safeguards if that corruption is a problem those systems are an acceptance of that corruption what were the drug addicts that you met like when i went into the police i had a very stigmatized view of people who had a problem with drugs i looked down on them i did i didn't i didn't read i didn't know i just saw them as people who had made a mistake stupid enough to try the drugs in the first place and didn't have the mental willpower to get themselves out of it but when i started working undercover i realized the people i had to get to know were those people who were struggling with problematic heroin or crack cocaine news or both and i realized actually that they were a massive selection of people and i realized that they were where they were because of what had happened to them or more often than not what had been done to them and i realized that they were vulnerable people who were struggling who needed help i understand i i learned that fairly quickly and i was very keen to keep learning about these people really for selfish reasons though because if i understood their motivations how how they worked what made them tick it could make me a better undercover officer and i very cynically manipulated them and i picked on the most vulnerable people i sought out and i looked for the most vulnerable people because the most vulnerable are the easiest to manipulate and that's the game i was in but there were many really nice people and thoughtful people and intelligent people who had just ended up where they were for circumstances out of their control i remember in northampton it was a woman who went by the name of uma and one day just because to try and offset some suspicion i was playing rattling i was having a day where i was making out i didn't have much money and um since she saw me she said oh mate mate you're hanging out aren't you you're struggling and i went yeah yeah and she reached into a pocket and she handed me a fiver and i says but hang on you're going to need that on you she says no it's fine you know i'm i've just had a hit i'm going to be all right for a good few hours i've got time to earn some some back but you need it now you need it more than me and i've never come across such pure generosity anywhere because she needed that to avoid her pain and to feel better but she just empathized with me or how she perceived me to be that i was rattling that i was in pain and so her first response without a thought was to give me that money it was incredible and one day she told me uma she said well i can stop taking heroin anytime i want and actually every few weeks i do i take a fortnight's break to bring down my tolerance so it's so it's you know easier to maintain the habit she says but the trouble is when i stop taking heroin i become suicidal because then i remember the feeling of my uncle my uncle's fingernails as he sexually abused me as a little girl and that's why she stayed on heroin to block out that emotional pain [Music] sometimes some operations it felt like i was on the wrong side quite frankly was it the same for the sellers as well most dealers of heroin and crack cocaine are people who are being exploited by organized crime they are being exploited and pushed into dealing and they're pushed into finding new customers but they're pushed into it because they've got their own habit and of course they're exploited because if they deal for the organized crime gangs the actual gangsters then they get their supply free and and yet these people who are the dealers are treated as dealers by the courts and get extraordinary long sentences when actually they need rescuing from that exploitation and they need help there was and there's one particular one particular um dealer if you can call him a dealer he was a 16 year old and he was part of this gang that i got got into and i was buying regularly off when i met him he was 16 and he was actually one of the nicer ones i could have a laugh with him he was good fun he was a bit cheeky and i saw him change from a fun-loving 16 year old to a terrifying 17 year old over the space of six months and the reason he changed and changed so rapidly is because the group that he was with made it clear to him how you had to behave to survive in that world because by policing drugs by having undercover cops like me in that marketplace or police informants in that marketplace it creates a darwinian situation where the ones who are successful who don't get caught who don't get grassed up they're the ones who are prepared to be the most ruthless who who can who can show extreme violence to intimidate people can we get onto them why you decided to quit eventually even though i knew i was causing harm to vulnerable people i justified that harm because i saw it that the end justifies the means that because i was going to catch these gangsters at the end of the operation the harm i was going to cause to individuals was justified for every passing year the streets got more dangerous and it got more dangerous because of the presence of people like me in that marketplace and these people become more violent and they become and they turn it into an art form even because that's how you don't get caught and the harder we police this the more we sharpen that sword the more we encourage that brutality by forcing that competition on the streets but the problem is police never reduce the size of the market it actually happened in the 1990s when all of those resources were directed into drugs policing by the home office twice the resources twice as many twice the prison sentences prisons filled up the markets never reduce the size of the market never shrinks so more often than not especially in our inner cities successful drugs policing increases violence i realized i couldn't i can't i couldn't be in the police anymore and this conflict i was also starting to have a breakdown because of my ptsd uh profound sense of guilt for the home that i'd caused to individuals i had to get out and because i have this knowledge and this experience i am duty-bound to try and explain it to the public because if the public understood these things the public would insist of their politicians that we change policy and if you could just summarize what the word is to be spread what would that be we must end this war on drugs we must end drug prohibition and by that i don't just mean the decriminalization of people who use drugs of course we should stop criminalizing people who use drugs but what i mean is i'm looking at this through a police lens we need to take this power away from organized crime we have to take the drug markets away from criminals we have to legally regulate drugs to take the power away from organized crime to save lives and make a safer society and i i'd like to actually address any other any police out there who's listening to this and i would encourage you to also turn the blind eye i would encourage you to decide not to young to ruin some young person's life by arresting them and and putting them into the criminal justice system for possession of drugs because it does ruin people's lives i would encourage you to turn a blind eye i would encourage you to ignore [Music] your orders in that regard you know as as this movement carries on as this movement grows internationally amongst police the movement who want to stop this war on drugs then there will be more people inclined to stand up to those orders there will be more people inclined to refuse to criminalize young people like that now i know that police now have a diversion schemes many police they don't have to arrest they don't have to um prosecute people they don't have to put people into the criminal justice system they can divert them to health systems but where you don't have diversion schemes and i would i'm encouraging descent [Music] i hate to strip down to next to nothing grease out put a towel over the cut section of bar off the window so it wouldn't scratch my back and leave it myself out well stem wrenched that up just another little inch probably strangling everybody had always hated since childhood but just enough for me to get out

Channel: LADbible TV

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Keywords: the lad bible, lad bible, lad, bible, videos, viral videos, viral, documentaries, exclusives, interviews, undercover drug cop, undercover narcotics officer, undercover at a drug gang, drug gangs uk, birmingham drug gangs, bruger bar boys gang, taking drugs undercover, amphetamine and crack, crack cocaine epidemy, crack cocaine problem uk, drug policy reform, legalisation of drugs, drug dealers and drug addicts, police cracking on drugs, policing drugs, interview with undercover cop

Id: nlse-4pNCwQ

Length: 21min 46sec (1306 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021