Policeman Shoots & Kills Gangster in MET’S Most Controversial Case: Tony Long

tell me about the AEL Rodney situation so AEL Rodney was part of an organized crime group they done business with a couple of Colombian drug dealers we're following at a discrete distance voice on the radio it goes right attack attack attack it was probably the most difficult call I've ever had to make anyway I decid I had to make I thought a series of shot he's he's dead when did it occur to you that you're going to end up in a 10year court case what were the Press calling you at that time The Equalizer the me own serial killer got all the photographers running up alongside trying to take pictures through the window what it going through your head at that moment I was what the [ __ ] is going on yet after all of these years do you have any one regret Tony welcome to the show mate nice to meet you yeah and you too and you too this roll all the way back where did you grow up and how did you become London's Met's top firearm officer um I'm not sure I was the top but going back um I'm a south coast boy I was brought up between Bogner reges and LA or L lamp my best jokes and you stole it before I got it out um yeah I was I was bought up on a 1960s heidy High Holiday Camp um and uh my mom was the secretary uh and my dad was a bar manager uh and uh I was born on a Holiday Camp up in suffk and as a baby moved out of this holiday Camp um I was privately educated so I'm sort of a posh kid but not really um and uh so I went to boarding school at the age of s in Sussex uh left at the age of 17 CU I wasn't going to get any more qualifications um been brought up on a a diet of War magazines um and uh War films and cup films and uh sort of you know 1970s uh cops you know in New York chasing bad guys over rooftops with guns and getting in car chases and I thought that's that sounds pretty exciting and I certainly wasn't going to join a police and Patrol the seafront in Bogner reges so I ended up you know going the going at the smoke did you and joining joining the met so where did you go when you joined the met up in what part of London did you join well obviously I went to henden which is Northwest London which is in those days everybody went through recruit training at henden and then I got posted to leam okay in southeast London okay which is a good good learning that's straight in straight in the deep end is it yeah straight from Little Hampton to what was it how old were you when you when you uh were training up in hon um I was 18 and a half and I was already a welfare case CU I me and my mate had this deal down in a Holiday Camp that we only dated um girls that were there for a week on holiday or two weeks Max never go with a staff cuz they were there for the whole season so uh I'd left school i' gone to work at the camp um doing like maintenance and stuff on the buildup to the summer season um and then all the all the the first part of the summer season was old age pensioners and they were used as a sort of a test bed to make sure everybody was the kitchen was working properly and all that sort of stuff so there were no kids my age except the waitresses uh ended up making one of them pregnant they never told me about contraception or boys boarding school um and so halfway through training school I ended up um uh having to get married literally halfway through went away for the weekend came back married at 18 and a half and the funny thing was my father-in-law wasn't at the wedding and the reason that he wasn't in the wedding was cuz he was in prison so uh what was he banged up for uh receiving a Lor load of stolen Lor ties he'd been nicked by the regional crime Squad uh and I knew this cuz my my wife the be had told me uh but I called I got called up to see the um the comant at henden and um I thought it was about my marry quarters because like I said I was being treated as a bit of a welfare case and he said is there anything you'd like to tell me about your future father-in-law and I no sir he said well PS you'd like to read this and he hands me a letter and I look at it and it's got from you know prisoner 4629 at Stafford prison um asks for day release to go to the the wedding of his daughter Kim to police constable I'm going the Metropolitan please so obviously I deny it and but uh yeah did he get let out for the day no he didn't didn't the first time I met him I [ __ ] myself cuz he was like a big old Bruiser um bit of a gypsy bare knuckle Fighter the kindest gentlest person you ever met and he was a really good artist and I'm quite good at Art so we we hit it off straight away but I remember the first time I met him I was proper botling it and uh I went up to get some drinks at the bar came back Tri and Spilled beer all over that's a good start good start but no he was he was all right he was he was he sing as a pan with you knowing you going to be a coer and everything yeah he was well I mean I was already a couple by the time we first met he was okay yeah he was I mean cuz sometimes old school back in the 70s ' 80s can be a bit older than me I don't want to Cooper in the family and did you know what he was absolutely fine with it but I had to all all the only the only thing was that I had to tolerate him telling me that he was innocent he'd been fitted up by original crimes literally every time I saw him how long did he get rough don't know to be honest I don't know it wasn't certainly wasn't his first offense you know he was at it earning a pound note well he said he was innocent you know what I don't know I mean back in the day he might well just be that you know he was a bit of a face and uh his time his time had run up and it was his turn to get Nick I don't know but it was a whole Lory load of what was the movement for you then when you went there when was the first time you said you know what I actually want to go in this in this department well far on so like I said I was brought up in Sussex um and uh you know I've told you what my interests were so I always had guns yeah you know I always had air pistols and air rifles and probably before legally you should have done but mind you this back in the 70s so maybe not um and there was plenty of places certainly in the winter you know go down on the beach and shoot go in the woods and and shoot and stuff that so I'd always been interested in guns and I was a bit of a you know student I suppose of firearms um and so as soon as I was legally able to get a what calls a section one Firearms s or shotgun s at first and then a section one Firearms back in the day were pistols and rifles um I joined a a Rifle Club in chistera uh and I found that I was actually quite a natural pistol shot and started winning competitions and things like that so when I joined the met and I was given marry quarters I had a safe in my marry quarters and I brought my guns up from Sussex and uh you know carried on doing sport shooting really um getting a Firearms um course was pretty limited back then certainly if you look 12 and a half which is what I did um and so I didn't I didn't get shots course when I was a regular copper I eventually went on a unit called a special Patrol group the SPG uh where pretty much everyone on the the unit were trained in Firearms you didn't have to it wasn't a requirement to be on the SPG but most guys did do a course um and I did a I did a course nowadays I think initial basic Firearms course just to carry a gun is about eight weeks W back then it was five okay five days five days was it five days okay so if you're a good shot if you go get in there yeah is that basically what it was they weren't all good shots but I'm saying if you were a good shot you then get in so yeah that's exactly what happened so I went on my basic Firearms course and I got pinged as being above you know standard and um encouraged to to become a Firearms instructor yeah so I did the Firearms instructor's course and back then um the unit was called d11 D Department was training so the1 was a training department predominantly but in 197 5 as a result of all the international terrorism um the SAS had just a year or so previously been given their counterterrorist role and the Met were told you need to have a unit that's able to hold the fort until such time as the Cavalry arrive I.E the SAS um and they went you know we're very proud of being an unarmed police force we don't want to create a an armed counterterrorist team oh let's give it to the instructors cuz all good shots so that so so so you were one of the originals I wasn't one of The Originals cu the Firearms unit was first formed in 1968 1967 the previous year three met officers have been shot dead by a guy called Harry Roberts Harry Roberts game he was with yeah and so that was when it was established that up to that point there was no formal firearms training it was literally a case of you used to be in the Army didn't you right is a revolver go and look for that bank robber and it was there was no real formal training as such so in 1968 or 67 uh after that after what we call the fox Dr one1 shootings um they Fox Tru 111 shootings what's that fox Tru 111 was the call sign of the unarmed Q car sorry the not the unarmed Q Car the uh unmarked Q car yeah um that the three officers were in that stopped Harry Roberts and his crew in their car um so uh the call sign their call sign was Fox Dr 111 and it became known as the fox Dr 111 shoot M um so they the firearms training unit was formed in ' 68 and their job was to train something like 5,000 regular bobies and detectives and people like that that needed to carry a firearm and like I said in 1975 they were given officially like a formal operational role to be a SWAT team one of a better word so I I actually joined it in 83 yeah so about nine years after they've been eight or nine years after they'v been given that operational role but it was still very much in its imp you're probably too young to remember a TV show called Dixon at dot green but you may have heard of it have you heard Dix green so back in the 1950s there was a film made called the Blue Lamp uh and the Metropolitan Police lent an awful lot of support to the making of This film it was a typical you know West uh West London Studio black and white film and it followed the story of a guy who was an experienced old sweat PC teaching a new lad the ropes um and he was as straight as there a laser beam This Bat he was so straight he was absolutely Incorruptible you know he's smart in his uniform with his metal ribbons up and he walked around the beat with his hands behind his back you know um Walking t to toe yeah exactly that yeah um and in the end he got shot okay um and that this was a film as opposed to a TV show but it became such a popular film um and the Met had lent their support to it because to be honest the Met were going through a period in then in the sort of 50s um pretty much like they're going through now they they couldn't do right for doing wrong there was there had been undoubtedly some corruption um they didn't have a very good reputation and what this film did is it basically painted this image of what the Met wanted londoners to think the police force was um and then it was so successful they then as a spin-off they made a TV show where Dixon at do green got brought back from De from from the grave and he became this character and it went from like 19 50 something right the way through until the 70s I mean it was probably the most T you know popular TV show one of the most popular TV shows and like I said it gave this image uh and most of the the image was around the fact that you know the Met police don't carry guns or British police don't carry guns um and it painted this image that was totally false really because we did carry guns um and we weren't whiter than white you know um but that was the image that they wanted to betray to such an extent that they sort of buried their heads in the sand in relation to the real use of firearms and we don't want to talk about that senior officer was like you know hide away so you weren't allowed to use the word gun on the radio police radio you know if you needed urgent assistance you needed police to come with firearms because you were getting shot at you used to I need units here and they need to bring equipment okay if you see the word gun on the radio like the inspector would drag you in his office why well because they just didn't want the public to know that we had guns you carrying yeah it was just ridiculous you didn't have you had holsters but you had to wear it carry them in your pocket couldn't be seen what was the law back then when all the bank robberies were going on in the 80s massive was what was the70s 80s massive going in there banging out money from every bank and every career whatever was going on what was the what was the law back then for you guys to prevent this happening well really the only people that were were doing anything proactively with the Sweeny the flying Squad um and like I said you know one of the things that encouraged me to join the Met was like TV shows films exciting exciting P work and and really what did the deal for me and made me sign up on the dotted line was the Sweeney came out right the perfect time perfect time that's what I want yeah Ford Grenada long air 2in revolver again bash big old handle bar sadly I couldn't I couldn't grow until I was about 40 but yeah so that that to me was was what I what I joined to do and um you know as a ordinary regular uniform copper you'd know there were bank robberies happening because you'd be responding to them normally it was like Thursday or Fridays which was pay slip day because everything was cash then yeah so you know people that worked in factories got paid their money in an envelope and the security van would have to deliver that so anywhere where there was going to be lots of cash would get robbed as I was joining in the 70s it was Banks but quite quickly they stopped robbing banks because Banks upped their security yeah um and started putting screens in before that you could just hop across the counter and bit glass yeah if that yeah um and um so that became more difficult to do so then they started doing cashing Transit so security Vans and and the security van companies would slowly but surely keep adding bits and pieces airlock systems and all the rest of it until it became too difficult to do that you know and so they'd have to change the way they went about doing it um but the flying Squad were responsible for uh investigating and proactively dealing with armed Rob robbers but they kept it very much to themselves so a certain amount of flying Squad officers that every officer would be trained in East Firearms if you weren't in if you didn't have a gun you have a a pickaxe H or a or a baseball bat literally okay um and what in the back of the car in the back of the car yeah yeah and given to you or you bring it yourself um they were I think they were issued was can you imagine baseball baseball bats yeah um and um so they go out on jobs and they were detectives were always um a little bit uh what's the word uh too cool for school yeah you know they weren't interested in doing tactics you know D1 the firearms training Wing was so he should stand back get behind cover um you know challenge with a good shout of armed police Put the gun down but these were experienced Street coppers and they knew that if you did that and you were 12 yards away from the bad guy the bad guy's going to have a 12 yard head start on you when he legs it so they would just swarm out of a you know their hiding places with their pickax elves and their guns and and Bash them up basically they used to call it a bash up um and uh so you were aware of that as a uniform officer um but you didn't really get have any involvement in it um and at that time d11 which was the nearest the Met had to a SW squad team wasn't doing it either the flying Squad would keep it they were very secretive because it was all based on informance they knew that robbery was going to take place because an informant had given him the intelligence to put together a plan and there was a good chance that the informant was actually part of the robbery team and you're going to have to let him leg it and Escape right yeah so you know all this stuff so there's a grass in house in house grass honor honor Amongst Thieves it's rubbish it's nonsense they were all grass the old bill ever bung people like that you saying you got an informant for to speak there was an there was an informance fund absolutely there's an informance fund yeah yeah but you would give him 10 grand or five or back in the day maybe a grand to say give us the heads up on that well yeah and of course you know there might there might have been a chance that you you know the detectives that were the pro this it's all changed now but back then um you were judged on your ability as a young copper if you wanted to get in the Cid in particular on informance so my surname is long uh when I first uh went to Lan my nickname amongst the local kids especially the black kids was like school boy yeah school boy you know and I had to like puff up my chest and pretend I didn't look 12 and eventually you know I I became quite back then there was a term you still hear it occasionally now uh but the term was Thief Taker and it was almost a sort of a a term of Honor you know if you got called a thief taker it meant that you were a good copper and you were proactive and that probably meant you had informants yeah um and then I only did five years Street duty at Lam uh period of that was as um A View to being a detective on the crime Squad working in plain clothes um but my nickname changed from school boy to Long Grass because the the local villains thought that I had loads of grasses working for me in your pocket yeah fact I didn't I used to play mind games with them so he'd stop some little [ __ ] bag and you go well you had a bit of a result the other night and they be like what you talking about oh you know that burglary down High Street all the fur coats that was you was it like grin and wink [ __ ] tell me that you know and so he'd give him a little clue like subtly and they'd go [ __ ] that sanso told you that well he did this you know and they just they'd all grass on each other you know and so I had about but a lot of the people that you know I had weren't um registered inants in fact I I don't think I ever had a registered informant my informants were people like a mom who was concerned that her teenage daughter was hanging around with little tow rags and then she found a stash of letters that these kids were sending from remand home while they were waiting for trial for burglary or whatever it might be and she'd let me read the letters right and I'd get to know the nicknames and I'd get to know who was hanging with who and it's like a big puzzle put it together but if you had registered informants that meant that you it you actually registered his name and you were then eligible to get him money for any information that officially that grw yeah that bore fruit so if he told you there was going to be a burglary um and these were the guys that were going to do it and this is the vehicle they had and where it was hidden and everything else and you put together an operation and succeeded in arresting them he got some payment for the fund so he' have done that for Pure wedge you would have done that for Pure money rather than getting off saying well you're going to get three years for this if you give me the heads up on that I that to six months yeah yeah all of that yeah all of that and yeah so but yeah so you might have someone say that was the getaway driver so he wasn't carrying a shooter on the plot um but he'd be allowed to leg it now the detectives knew that but they didn't want to use plods yeah yeah like me um or like the you know like the 11 cuz we were all you know we were uniform BLS and uh so they keep it all to themselves and so we didn't actually start getting involved in our robbery plots until probably the late ' 80s okay um and when we did um we started shooting people because that's what we were trying to do a lot of the detectives it's a different story for a detective so for instance you know let's say you're following I don't know Joe Mo arm robber well when you're putting the case together you're doing a lot of surveillance on him and a lot of that surveillance is um what do they call it lifestyle surveillance so you basically want to know where he's going who he's meeting and all the rest of it it's not you're following him to watch him do a robbery following him to build up an image of his lifestyle so you followed him with his kids down at school and seen him drop his kids off at school and pick him up yeah you know um and so he's a real person to you and so even if you do find yourself with a gun in the hand and you catch him on the plot wearing a batt of clava and carrying a gun there's a sort of an inbuilt human you know barrier if you like from actually actually shooting him whereas to us he was just a face on a briefing sheet you know if we caught him on the plot with a gun and we were much more conf confident in the use of firearms uh that's what we trained to do yeah so it wasn't that we were deliberately shooting people um or going out of our way to shoot people if if we shouted arm police and they dropped their guns and they didn't get shot but they'd have to drop them pretty quickly yeah um how quickly are you thinking he's got a shooter I've got a shooter he's going to shoot me or I'm going to shoot him how quickly you got think this is like half a second stuff right second stuff yeah so when I most of my career as as a Firearms officer I was also an instructor so um what I used to teach to people was which was my policy you know the way I not policy but the way that I dealt with it was if someone's got a gun in the hand or a knife in the hand I shoot them I shoot them now if I want to and I can justify shooting them yeah um so having made that decision now why shouldn't I shoot them yeah do you get you get what I'm saying so it's like right but yeah you know he's the gun's poting muzzle down or whatever but I've made that decision to shoot him so if if he just even so much as starts to bring that gun up okay you know I'm going to shoot him okay a lot of coppers work on the premise like oh he's got a shotgun but it's pointing at the floor so I can't shoot him um so and but the time it takes for him to bring that shotgun from there to there yeah is fractions of a second and and action will always beat reaction so unless you've already action will always beat reaction yeah half a second quicker than you you always so if you haven't made that decision that he if he Twitches his shot then you are playing you are behind the curve yeah and you're not going to get your shots off um so your mindset is I'm going to shoot him no no as long as he keeps his gun down I can shoot him why shouldn't I why shouldn't okay as long as you keep the gun down yeah yeah okay yeah yeah so that's kind of my my my T what was that feeling like on your first shot how many people have you shot five five people yeah do you remember your first shot absolutely yeah my first incident was so I'd been in the department I joined 83 so it's two years after I was in the department it was Boxing Day 1985 and we got called out from home um for a domestic siege that had been going on for nearly 24 hours so our standby team had been there um and it was we got a call at home so in those days because no mobile phones had pages um so the only people that had Pages was the standby team so when they when you when you took over that role You' pick up your your gas powered pager yeah um and if it beeps you get you get into work um so I got a phone call at home um like Christmas Day saying I don't know if you've been watching the Telly time but there's this Siege going on I said yeah I've been watching it you know um they said well we're trying to put together a scratch team um are you available tomorrow if we need you and I said yeah give us a call yeah uh and it was my son's thirdd or fourth third birthday uh on boxing day yeah and my my m is listening to the phone call and she's like what you just agreed to go to work you [ __ ] what don't worry about it I said it'll all be it'll all blow it'll be stood down by the test of course it didn't so I got up early in the morning uh me and my mate went in to work together this a share lifts at the time and we discussed you know what could you know we' had a almost had a briefing cuz we'd seen what was going on on the screen on the television and every time uh the negotiators went forward to talk to the suspect through the broken kitchen window our team would come up on either side of the window so that they couldn't be seen by the suspect um but they'd have sledgehammers and they'd have their guns out and all the rest of it and the stun grenades and ready to go in case it all went to it up um and so we went all right okay so we kind of had this briefing um and but occasionally he'd come out on the balcony on his own this B and I remember my mate saying to me um we should take a baton gun because baton gun had just come into service but it was meant for riots and it was only actually authorized for public order use and it's a 37 mm round so it's about that big about that long it's a thing that they were faring in Northern Ireland plastic bullets yeah yeah um and uh after the the riots in the early ' 80s it was authorized for use the mainland UK and we thought well if he comes out on the balcony shoot him with that and that'll distract him and we can grab hold of him before he gets back into the flat where this little girl was being held hostage this little fouryear old girl was where was this in London uh northal North over by Heath so um yeah anyway we we get to the base and uh one of our inspectors is there and he's going to be in charge of us and we said boss we just been think talking about it on the way in get the back and go nope it's only authorized for public order use you know can't use it so we said well yeah but no no no buts so okay so that was one option out the window and then we got down there we got briefed by the team and they said oh yeah yeah we moveed forward so we've been going for backwards and forward so often we've left the sledgehammers on either side of the window so if you get called for with the Sledge there's a sledgehammer waiting for you there you know so um just after we arrived a new set of negotiators came on and they didn't want us anywhere near it they were convinced that the reason he wouldn't surrender is because we knew he knew that we were out there with guns and that we were going to shoot him as soon as he came out um and so we just got pushed to the sidelines yeah don't we we don't want the suspect to see you so at one point they called forward his wife who he tried to grab at knife point the day before when the negotiators had sent her forward which is a complete no no anyway to get like a member of the family or someone involved in and um and at one point he he he send a four on the balcony again and he goes they're going to attack me and no they're not they're not going to attack you you know they promised me they won't what's that Sledgehammer doing throw that Sledgehammer over the balcony girl goes picks a sledgehammer up drops it over the balcony or there were fireman downstairs with a with a with a blanket ready to catch the girl if he dropped the little girl over the balcony nearly took out a fireman and missed him by about that much um so the whole thing was a you know they were the Unseen Commander was so desperate that it wasn't going to be resolved by use of firearms that he you know he goes in order guns aren't to be seen like I his Dix of do green sort of mentality anyway long story short short wires got crossed the suspect came out on the balcony um people at one end of the balcony thought he was making a break for it because he had a knife with a big kitchen knife in his hand thought he was going to try and fight his way past us and get down the down the stairs and a away so they broke cover but in point of fact he he he wasn't he he sprinted along the B need to grab hold of a right Shield that had been abandoned at the beginning of it to drag this this right Shield back into his flat to help him build his defenses up and he managed to get back in the flat before the team so they came face to face the lead guy had the right Shield thrown at him um and he was in and that was it we were committed then um and it was it was purely down to a lack of coordination poor management and everything else so we ended up throwing stung grenades in um I clambered through the window uh the kitchen window um and uh he made the kitchen it a bit of an obstacle course he' pulled the fridge over onto its side and the washing machine so I had to clamber all over that the smoke from our stung grenades um basically meant I couldn't see my hand in front of my face um and uh turned out he'd he also wired the fridge up uh to the electrics thinking that we'd get electrocuted for whatever reason I don't know that didn't happen um and I found away into the living room and he was using this little four-year-old kid as a as a as a shield the lighting was really poor the curtains were pulled and um it was just starting to get dark it was sort of late afternoon and um I shouted at him I think I called him a c word or something similar dropped the knife or whatever I was just angry to be honest it's just like this poor little kid she'd been treated like a ragd doll for two days uh was it his kid well no it wasn't the Press kind of got confused about this it wasn't his kid at all basically his wife had left him cuz he so going back to what you're saying he he was an armed robber and uh him and his little crew all West Indian guys um had all been nicked and he turned Queen's evidence grasped all his mates for for a lesser sentence so he got a Les less a sentence and that sentence was in protective custody so instead of going to prison and going on a wing he spent it in a in a closed down police station where he had the whole cell passage to himself he had a little gym in one cell he had a TV he had conjugal right visits um and after a relatively short period of time he was released back in the world went back to his wife um and started beating up on her right and raping her right so his wife tried to report this to the police police like it's domestic because back then I mean nowadays you know what the you know how conscious we are violence back then it was like oh another another woman you know there's no point taking her Court into court because she said she'll say she loves him and all so nothing got done um So eventually she takes a kid and she goes to her half sister um whose flat This was um go a woman called Jackie Charles and she had a daughter the the same age um so anyway he turns up Christmas Day demanding to see his kid yeah his wife runs next door to use the phone obviously no mobile she's run next door to use the phone he's forced his way in the flat tries to take the kid and Jackie Charles tries to stop him and he stabbed her 14 times my god um she had like defensive wounds all over so when you went in there then going back to where we were when you went in there and you were like right call him the seab bomb down there what was the next movement for you like you go back a minute ago you're saying right it's either me or him well he had he had this knife and I could see the knife glinting yeah and uh like I said he was this little girl was across him they were both you know they were both black yeah um and literally all I could see with their eyes and their teeth and it was really hard to make out where her body ended and his began yeah but I could see his shoulder there was a sort of beam of light on his shoulder and so I just just fired a pair of shots at his shoulder he didn't drop the knife and to this day I say this every time I do an interview like this and I wrote about it in the book I can't honestly tell you whether I fired my shots immediately before he stabbed the little girl as he stabbed the little girl or after he stabbed the little girl it all happened so he stabbed the little girl he stabbed her he stabb and he stabbed it's the same knife that he killed um The Jackie Charles with he stab one of the stab wounds he he' already stabbed the slashed the little girl in front of the negotiators in front of the negotiators the day before um right down to the bone so she already had a bandage like what say a bandage it was a bit of Old Rag tied around her wrist around her arm so did you knock him did you knock him down no so what happened is so bear in mind he's he's sitting on a couch he's sort SL he's in the corner of a of a Sati with a little girl acrossing yeah and um so I fired Two Shots instinctively because I came up I tried to use my sights CU that sort of we we used to do um what we call instinctive shooting or sensor Direction shooting where you keep both eyes open and you f focus on the threat yeah and you just punch the gun out in the same way that you point I'm pointing my finger at you now and it's a great technique for Close Quarter shooting um provided you know you've got a big Target like you know it's just one person on their own but with a hostage you really don't want to be doing that you want to use the sights so you can get pinpoint accuracy but I brought my gun up and of course it's dark I can't see my sights so I fired a pair of shots instinctively at the furthest part of his body away from the little girl one of those rounds so the knife was up like that so one of the rounds went through the muscle here and the other one went through his clothing so I only hit him with uh one of the two the two rounds I'd fired but what happened then is he instinctively sort of closed his eyes and went into a ball at which point The Flash from my gun had illuminated silhouetted my my sights and two he'd exposed his Temple to me so I fired a deliberate aim shot at his Temple um and I just Sor I didn't know whether I'd hit him I thought I had because his eyes kind of rolled up into his head like the classic movie you know eyes up to the top of his head and then he just slumped and I thought okay know he asked me what you know what I thought I thought well I [ __ ] killed him yeah um now the unit was created as I said earlier in that 68 we were given the full operation role in 75 it's now 85 and we've not fired a shot in anger yeah we've been out on like probably a couple of hundred jobs in that that decade but never had to fire a shot and in point of fact uh we were so proud of that all the older guys in the unit and the bosses of the unit were so proud that we'd resolved every incident we'd ever dealt with by you know softly softly catchy monkey in negotiation you know um that we would never fire a shot and if we did fire a shot the boat that did it would be directing traffic and L my street the next day you know because would you would have [ __ ] up their perfect reputation so the first thing that went through my head is you [ __ ] done it now mate you you you you've actually done what you've been training to do to and um so was there any knock on effects was there in knock fix when you kill someone what the I didn't kill him oh you didn't kill him I was going to come to that okay so what so what happened was um and this is a theme through every shooting I've been involved in I don't know whether it's guilt or whatever but you've just I thought I'd killed him so [ __ ] I've killed a about so it's like what do you do well make yourself busy so the first thing I did was grab a hold of the little girl and the knife was out of her and you always Tau with knife wounds to leave the knife in sit you take it so i s took hold of the knife to stabilize her but she she just slumped her body weight just slumped and the knife just came out so I dropped it on the floor I picked a shell dress and I didn't take the shell dressing out it's wrapping I just literally just stuck it where the knife had been picked her up and took her out of the building um I couldn't get out of the building straight away because he' put a load of barriers up against the door so it's just as well we went through the windows um but eventually those barriers were withdrawn I got out on the balcony there was still um Blood on the balcony and it had been raining all day so it was really slippery so I was really conscious of that and I ran down the stairs and ran past the negotiators which who were just looking at me like what have you done sort of thing handed the little girl over to the ambulance crew um who literally just there was no paramedics in those days literally just shoved her in the back of the ambulance and drove out I helped get the ambulance through the crowd because there was an Angry Crowd uh predominantly black uh they weren't angry for what I'd done because they'd been Bing for this bl's Blood you know uh because he' killed a black woman and he was holding a little black girl hostage you know they they they wanted him dealt with and they they were angry because it appeared that the police weren't doing anything um so um I I helped clear the path for the ambulance to go out and then I realized I still have my gun in my hand and um so I Tu the gun in my jacket and and went upstairs and uh when the team came in um a couple of minutes later cuz we' taken over another flat down the balcony as our control room and I thought right make yourself busy make yourself busy so I was making them I'm making them bruise and Mak so you're making yourself busy to get this off get get something else off mind keep off your mind yeah absolutely that and um the team all came in and uh you know it it was a bit bizarre really because man hugs weren't really a thing in the 80s but just FKS were like [ __ ] H mate you know and uh someone said something and I said well I don't worry about it he's [ __ ] dead in he he said no he's not right he as soon as you left the room his eyes popped open and he said finishes off yeah and um so yeah he stood trial in a in a in a wheelchair I got called to the old bowy to give evidence like however many months later you know eight months nine months later um I got Commendation for the judge um and um I think I've got commissioner's Commendation for bravery as well um but I was never suspended from Duty though I was the first person to do it they didn't know what to do with me so I literally went the next when I went back to work after Christmas I went and saw the armor and went I need a new Revolver They issued me a new revolver and I was back on the op team you know so back then they really didn't know what to do with me and I just went back to our usual cycle of three weeks training one week Ops you know adding for items I tell me about the Azel Rodney situation we're moving on here to what to 2 5 what happened that day what was the surveillance what was going through your mind so we' done the job the day before um and it was so I should say so you know we talked about the previous jobs I don't know how many operations we were do in a year then but we were really just in our infancy in terms of being used by proactive squads like the flying Squad like the regional crime Squad starting to do this thing then we had all the drugs and bits and pieces so as it was all of my shootings basically reflect reflect sort of uh criminal activity so we've gone from like you know or the progression from the Department from like domestic Siege to a pre-planned robbery plot and then to drugs and Drug importation and all the rest of it um so AEL Rodney was part of an organized crime group based in sort of West London uh NE and places like that predominantly afro Caribbean but there was some uh White criminals in amongst them and there was also um a handful of um South American in Hispanic um and they their primary job was drug distribution but a lot of the drugs that they were selling they were ripping off from other drug dealers basically um and robbing up drug drug dealers so they they done business with uh a couple of Colombian drug dealers that were based in edgear uh on previous occasions they'd gone there they' laid down the money they taken crack cocaine or whatever it was they were doing I think they were stealing cocaine and their little crack Factory they turn it into crack and um the last time they' done it a guy that had done the buy sort of came back and went they're rich for the taking they've got no protection at all they're very trusting um you know we could I'd have robbed him with a knife if I had a knife with me you know so the information was that it it was like um we had a a Photoshop of about 20 odd photographs it would be this guy will almost certainly be on the plot but as for the other guys it could be any one of these and it's probably going to be between three and four of them uh we don't know exactly where in Edge wear this these victims these drug dealing victims live but what we do know is it's somewhere near Edge wear underground station but that's all we know and it's a flat that's all we know so we can't afford to let this robbery take place because if they killed the Colombian drug dealers and let's be honest if you've done deals with these guys before you're not going to leave them alive you know it would just be Hing suicide so you know intelligence suggests that they're going to Rob and then kill and they're probably not going to just Rob what what's in the flat they're going to probably torture them until they can find out where the main stash is and take a lot so that that was the sort of route that it was going down and um so we'd gone out on this job on the first day um and nothing happened which is really common you know probably 80% of the jobs you go out on fizzle you know and then you'll go out on another time same job and it'll come off but so we got stood down and we got stood down sort of quite late in the probably about 9:00 in the evening and we've been on since 600 in the morning um and we all we'd really done is sat in what we call gunships which are our unmarked um cars three up uh with all our Weaponry um one of the cars will have method of Entry kit in it you know in case we have to go into a building uh there'll be medical kits and everything else by this point you know we are a totally different body to what we were when I had my first shooting in ' 85 we were doing at the time somewhere in the region of 850 to a th000 operations a year is that right yeah Jesus and that was between about 100 men right and women okay so we were split up into six sort of no not 100 men what I'm talking about it's more like 60 actually probably sort of six six six 10 man teams roughly yeah so we were doing a lot of work and there was a lot of that's a lot of graft over that 20 years isn't it oh yeah yeah yeah I mean it started off much less than that it progressed to that point um so anyway we got stood down and we got told rep parade at 6:00 um and this is so the first day was a Friday the second day is going to be a Saturday um and because we'd had guys book leave for the weekends um when we came in the next day rather than it just be gray team which was my team we had a splattering of guys from Orange team and splattering of guys from black team that's not a problem because that happens all the time we're always short-handed so you're always working with people from other teams all of our training it it runs parallel so we all in a six we cycle we all do the same training team the same instructors so there's no one doing anything different you know and um so that we get briefed mainly for the benefit of the new guys um and and we're off and running and um what what we're told is that um the previous evening um the bad guys uh had been trying to get guns together to do this robbery um but they kept making excuses to the the victims to the Colombians saying all right we could trying to get the money together you know eventually the com the um the victims went stuff it leave it you know we got think to do it's Friday night I mean we'll do it in the morning contact us in the morning um and so um we got told that things had changed overnight they obviously had facilities on these bad guys yeah um now I don't know what those facilities were um but almost certainly their phones were tapped so we could listen to conversation but of course they're talking in pwwa you know so that conversation that's been listened to has to be interpreted so probably have some you know West Indian guy listening to it in in a call center somewhere and then transmitting that information to the their point of contact within the unit yeah so there's always a bit of a danger of information either getting misread or Lost in Translation if you see what I'm saying so you never treat it as 100% but the more this job progressed the the more it looked like the intelligence was like A1 it was good so we got told to make our way to um Southwest London to a police station I think it was I think it was Fulham and and sit on standby there because we thought that there was going to be a meat between the robbers at a cafe at after a certain time so we all made our way to the the um forland police station par parked up in the yard it was a nice spring day last day of April um and uh we just chilled basically you know bit of banter getting your head down you know a couple the guys go around the corner and come back with some coffees that sort of thing it it was pretty low back and then the radio started getting a bit busy yeah we got subject one um into the cafe all okay looked like it you know starting to go the right direction oh you know we got subject five coming to the cafe now uh okay So eventually we get a third subject they get into this car uh which was a higher higher BW golf uh and it was hired by AEL Rodney using a forged um driving license so it's got his features on it it's got different names and everything else and he's hired this car and it's over hired now it's should have been handed back in but they're obviously using this to get around so they then followed Away by the surveillance team and what we do is we the you know we're not surveillance trained we're surveillance aware so you got a degree of surveillance training but we're not experts in surveillance that's the that's their job the surveillance team job so and we were using a radio called cougar which was a military encrypted radio so now the bad guys can't listen to what we're saying but it means that we have to keep within a certain range of the surveillance team in order to make sure we've still got good coms otherwise people are going to be making phone tring so anyway the subjects go to a known address the the team that are deploying us which was team within a secretive team within the flying Squad who dealt with um Ser contract killings and fast moving uh jobs that almost certainly involved like somebody being killed basically um so the surveillance team starts heading north towards um again I want to say Kilburn but it's not Kilburn I can't think the name of the place now uh but it's a predominantly black area and um we're following a discrete distance in a convoy order so three unmarked high performance Saloon cars and a um like a uh probably like a Mercedes Sprinter not Sprinter but you know one of the small B sort of thing he use as a taxi and that'll have the team leader in it one of our drivers and the silver Commander the detective in charge of the operation on the ground so what the information we're getting is that they're going from to a meet in I'll call it Kilburn but it wasn't Kilburn um in Kilburn to collect the third gun and they've been heard talking on the radio uh and they've said um we've got we want two Big Macs and a little one now at the time uh there's a submachine gun called a Mac 10 submachine gun uh and it stands for Military Arms Corporation and they were made in various places but the main ones were made in maretta Georgia in the states and they've been around since the 60s uh they've been used by the CIA and Vietnam they've been used by UK special forces in Northern Ireland and basically it's I describe it as a lead super soer it fires over a thousand rounds a minute a thousand yeah in 60 seconds yeah my God yeah I mean obviously the magazine only takes 30 but if your mass is good you can work out quickly you're going to get through a 30 round magazine So So hean Co MP5 um far as 850 rounds a minute so it's still fast but it's much more controllable and youve got 30 in each one each magazine yeah each magazine you got 30 un load bang and if and if you're inexperienced and you just grab hold of that trigger it will just go it's going to climb and it's going to you know it's pretty uncontrollable unless you know what you're doing and you firing very short like two or three round bursts it is like pretty lethal now there was a load of these in circulation and it was one of the main jobs in the met at the time was trying to take these things off the street and what it was is an underworld criminal armorer had bought about hundred of these things um on the pretext that he was going to from a legitimate arm source that he was he needed them for a James Bond film um and I think they were that's right they were blank firers so he bought them as blank firers so the barrel is blocked yeah um and a lot of other things and what he did is he converted them back so they were live fire and they were getting used in contract killings and particularly drug related contract killings a lot and so you know any getting a Big Mac off the street was big ma getting a Mac off the street was s considered a thing and that way we had two of them allegedly and probably a handgun or a Litt you know so anyway we knew that they were they were going to um hen it was they were going to go to hen and get this third gun and um sure enough they pull up and they pull up outside a West Indian um Club private club where there was a lot of activity out on the pavement you know and they were chatting to people lots of you know hand slapping and all that sort of stuff and then all three of them went off into a side street where where they were met by a third guy who G gave him a bag and then they went back to the car that bag was put in the back of the car and at that point they're still on the pavement talking but we get the information they've got the third gun and at that point the guy in the back seat puts on a what was described as a three4 length coat um and we're like why would you wear a three4 qu length coat on a hot day um cuz a ma 10 is it's not like a pistol it's you know sort of this big you know quite bulky bit of Kit small smallish but bulky um and then they're off and running and so we're back in behind the surveillance team when the surveillance team are doing their following bit and we're just hanging back that's called State green yeah um when it gets to the point where the silver Commander decides that he has sufficiency of evidence to Warrant stopping that vehicle and make making AR rest we go to state Amber okay and at State Amber the surveillance team need know that they need to start looking in their mirrors because if they see us coming up they need to pull over and let us yeah you know Leap Frog up to the front until we're in a position where we can take over the follow now we're not surveillance officers and we're not driving little discreete surveillance Vehicles we've got to have vehicles that are big enough to get three Big Blocks with body armor and all their weaponry and everything in um and you know we're all white and we're in hon we're now heading towards edgear and most of the way between H and edgear there was no decent fast stretches of road for us to to get through the surveillance team so it was only when we hit the I'm guessing it'll be in the A1 that the silver Commander goes right stay Amber so at that point we start getting through the surveillance team um and um we get to mil Hill Broadway and we finally get up to the front and we declare State red so that tells everybody on the operation the arrest is imminent the hit is imminent yeah and it goes into a road and they're heading towards a big roundabout um and if you turn left you're going to edgear and they would have been edgear station within a matter of minutes um and we're basically told right you need to do this now because if we lose them at this stage which is possible um you know you only got to get to a set of traffic lights you know and they get through on green and we're stuck stuck on red then and these Colombian drug dealers get killed we've got a duty of care to Colombian drug dealers we can't let that happen so we voice on the radio which would be the guy in the lead vehicle who's the the like the Convoy Commander at this stage of the operation goes right okay attack attack attack which is the words on the radio so we're going to hit him before the roundabout if we get a chance we're going to hit him at the roundabout if we get a chance and then almost immediately goes attack attack attack and the the alpha vehicle that's the lead vehicle does an overtake to get in front and the Bravo car which I'm in is going to if everything ends up correctly we're going to block them from the side and I'm the front seat passenger so my job is is what we call static cover yeah so if you think of it you're probably not even aware of it but when you get out of your car even though you might have had your car for two years and you're absolutely familiar with it and you know exactly where the door handle is you look at the door handle you probably don't even know that you do but your eye glimpses down to the door handle um you could probably do it by feel in the dark but you'll always kind of look you know when you open your door and you step out nobody steps out into the dark everybody looks even briefly to make sure you're not going to put your foot down a man cover or you know treading some dog [ __ ] or whatever um and then you got to put your plot cap on now these are all little seconds where your attention isn't on the occupants of that vehicle and then you got to run around and you got then you're going to bring your gun so the concept is it's it's cover and movement it's a military basic premises of like infantry tactics is that you only move when a a section of your team are covering yeah and you Leap Frog forward that's kind of how you do it so you work on exactly the same premise static cover guy in the front passenger seat just locks onto occupants of the vehicle guns up ready to shoot if he needs be and that allows the other guys to run and you know get themselves into position um and then as soon as you pretty well start hearing shouts of armed police and you kind of have a little look and you see that other guys are on it then you bug out and get out of the way so that's that's the way that we do it now on the Friday I was driving the Bravo car yeah um and my mate smudge next parah is like front seat passenger so if the job had happened the day before he'd have been yeah perhaps open fire as it was I'm The Man in the in the hot seat now so my perception was that it was pretty well a classic stop the alpha overtakes Slams on the brakes the bad guys are concentrating there effs on on uh alpha bravo pulls alongside and blocks them so they can't move out and the Charlie car stuffs them up the AR so they they they can't back out of it and then it's aggression domination and shouts of armed police smash the windows if you have to if they start try you can see the driver trying to get it in reverse Bloks will take shotguns um there's one Boke in each car and his sole job is to take out the tires with breaching rounds from a from a soff shotgun um flashbangs may be but certainly going to smash the window and you're just don't give them thinking time that's the that's the premise of it um and and to be honest I thought that's kind of the way that it went because I was just focused on that vehicle you know that and particularly as we as even before the hit went in come over the radio the guy in the back seat is looking around so I had it in my mind I think that we were potentially compromised here the bloke in the back seat was doing this doing that and then he looked like he was leaning forward and my my perception was that you there were a bit of a heat conversation going on in the car like you know old bills be honest you know so anyway zel Rodney is sitting in the back seat it's quite a big unit it's relatively small car it's only a Volkswagen Golf um and like I said he looks around like this he leans forward and then suddenly he just Ducks across the back seat and I can't see him and I think [ __ ] he's going for a gun so I bring up my carbine and I've locked on to and just as quickly he Springs back up again but I can't see his hands his shoulders are hunched he's and he but he's looking sort of out the other side of the car his back's to me I don't think he's even seen me I think I don't think he was even aware that the Bravo car is alongside I thought he's got a Mac 10 he's got a Mac 10 and he's going to work fire and I but I can't see his hands so it was probably the most difficult call I've ever had to make you know if you got a if you got a I've said this before you numerous occasions but if you've got a guy using a four-year-old child as a shield and he's got a knife in his hand that's not a difficult decision to make if you got three bad guys all wearing ball clavas and holding security guard hostage at gunpoint and two son off shotguns and a pistol that's the simplest decision in the world yeah you know people go oh it must be so difficult to make decision it's not but when you can't see a gun and you're going on the intelligence that you've been given and the suspect body language that that's a big call anyway I decided I had to make it so I I fir a series a shot um and nothing happened other than the window shattering and everything else he seemed to just remain in that position I didn't think about this until afterwards but if I'd have shot him out on the street I'd have probably fired two three rounds if they were effective he would have started to fall um and I at that point I I would probably have stopped or might far further round because it in the same time that action beats reaction yeah and it takes you time to see what they're doing and make the decision to shoot it also takes you time to realize that they're starting to fall and stop shooting yeah yeah so most people when they shoot they'll probably fall one or possibly two rounds more than they perhaps needed to because the brain hasn't quit quite registered so I find a total of eight rounds and and of course now I know that AEL Rodney was not only sitting in the backseat of the car so the back of his thighs his ass his back was supported by the car he also had a seat belt on and what I didn't realize is that uh my shots were having an effect but he was just slumping towards me and it was his body weight taking him down and suddenly when he got to about 45 degrees he dropped and at that point I thought right it's done job done so my car's quite close to his I couldn't have opened the door with his car there and although I can no longer see him I I don't know he's not still a threat he might still have his hand on the Mac 10 so I do what we're trained to do which is clamber across the front seats and come out through the driver's door I went ran in a circle I come up behind the car um and I tried to look in through the back window um but I couldn't see anything all I could see was black so I smashed the rear window with a muzzle of my gun um and looked in and I still couldn't see anything it just to me it was in darkness what I later found out didn't occur to me was that I would have never have seen him on the back seat anyway because the rear parcel shelf on a like an old style golf is about that deep it's actually got quite a big boot so looking into it I I would have never seen Beyond it anyway what I thought was Darkness was actually just the matte black um what you call it you know the lid hatchback lid so I then went around to the other side of the car I noticed that a window was smashed on the other side of the car uh and one of my mates from the alpha car had come around and he was covering so he gave me a nod I opened the door he covered in and Rodney was lying across the back seat um and he reached in and he grabbed hold of him by the sort of scruff of his collar and pulled him into a vertical position and at that point his head head sort of flopped like that and I could see this massive what looked like a exit gunshot wound um to the top of his head it looked like he'd been hit by an ax I could see gray matter he's he's dead um and bits of brain matter came out onto my mate's trousers and stuff like that and my mate looked at me I don't I can't remember any words being said but I'd worked with this guy for 10 years you know longer um and we kind of didn't need to say anything he kind of looked at me as if say this you if you this your work sort of thing and I went there and he went [ __ ] off you don't need to be here what was that feeling like afterwards on this shooting compared to the others what was going through your mind do you think there was going to be huge KnockOn effects from this when did it occur to you that you going to end up in a 10-year court case and it didn't trying to done for murder it didn't really occur to me and until a couple of years after the incident So within a few M well within about so so let me take through the page so by this time the whole the whole um post incident procedure has changed they're not going to go and issue you a new revolver the next day and say go back to work yeah now you're going to be suspended yeah for at least a couple of months at this point that's what I'm thinking um the iopc was was a Rebrand from whatever it was called before um and there had been lots of problems with the original format and so there had been lots of discussions between the Police Service in the UK and this new body to make sure that some of those issues would be resolved and one of the issues was how long police officers were being suspended for it just wasn't considered fair you know um and so the original decision was what we will do is we will come back to you within I think it was three weeks of an incident and we will tell you we will give you an update um and you know if if we need longer we'll tell you how long that's going to be and when we get to that point you and so on and so forth but we will update you on a regular basis but if after I think it was a month if after a month we have seen nothing to indicate that the officer acted unlawfully then it'll be up to you as a Police Service as to whether you reinstate him okay um so four weeks later I'm still suspended in the meantime we've um had the um the 2005 London bombings yeah and we've had um 7 seven 7 seven and then we had 217 yeah where the bombers failed to go off and where um John Charles was killed yeah so there's now me a Stockwell Tube Station was it back then yeah so there's now me and the two guys that are involved in that all of us are good friends you know there like I said there's only about 60 of us on the top floor so on the third floor so um we you know we know each other we get on well with each other and we're all in the Sin bin for one of a better word you know we're all suspended and all been investigated um I'd been recruited because I I was literally due to retire on the 11th of August um 2005 but because on the last day of April I've been involved in this shooting I'm suspended um Special Forces came down to London after the bombers went off in 77 and then they came back down in 217 and on both occasions I was because I was suspended they went right you're the you le aison guy for them so I'd been embedded with with them for the period that they were down um there was other jobs you know sort of support jobs that I could do you know working on projects and things like that so I wasn't that concerned about it but I've been recruiting to work for the fer and Commonwealth office doing protection duties for government employees in places like Afghanistan and things like that and I was looking forward to going doing the selection course for that um so uh I was sent away uh by the FCO to the states to do this selection course which was about seven weeks I did that I came back um which would have been about sort of late September and I think it was November um the ipcc came back and said um uh we believe the echo7 all of my statements and all of the team statements we all had an echo call sign and I was echo7 so um I wasn't so so so basically the ipcc said statement read something to the effect of um we're satisfied that e echo7 acted in accordance with the law and in accordance with his training um and he fired no more rounds that them were um required in the circumstances so that green card so I got put back on Ops so I was back on back on grade team going out and doing day-to-day jobs and things like that but the ipcc had submitted the papers to the crown prosecution service for them to make a decision so the ipcc had done six months decided i' acted lawfully then the crime prosecution service looked at it for another six months why did they look at it surely the ipcc said right it's out closed book why did it then go to that next level I think because they wanted um you know the the CPS are lawyers aren't they so they basically want they from their perspective as investigators they couldn't see that i' done anything wrong but they wanted the crown prosecution service to give it the seal of approval basically and the crown prosecution gave it to a silk to look at and silk is like the highest rank if you like within sort the system of barristers um he looked at it he decided I'd acted lawfully and and that's why they gave the result they did so basically almost a year to the day after the shooting I got the all clear um that I wasn't going to get prosecuted and what was that like for you were you had did you have the fear that you going get prosecuted fear of going to jail I was I was 100% certain that ID acted lawfully in in accordance with my training uh never even occurred to me that um there would be an issue um what I didn't know was that it was being filmed it was been filmed by one of the team guys in the Delta car from another team from black team good mate but he'd filmed it for training purposes not thinking it was going to end up and a shooting but what he's done is you know what what the Police Service does in this day and age you know back in the 70s they might have gone been that we want to see that but he and the 80s and the 90s and the and the but he declared it and he went straight to the team leader and said look you need to know I film this so the team leader said right well now you've declared it film the scene you know so not only did he film The Incident but he filmed all of the aftermath at the scene he filmed the first aid that was going on he he filmed the recovery of the gun in the back seat you know filmed the suspects being searched and led away and all that sort of stuff so it's a valuable document of what happened and he handed it in I'd never seen it I didn't see it I didn't see it until five years after the incident so by which time I've written my statement and all the rest of it so when I eventually got to look at this video five years later I was like that's not exactly how I recall it it turned out not to have been a perfect intervention at all it turned out that as the as our car the Bravo the alpha car did the overtake smudge went for an overtake and then came nose to nose with a car coming in the opposite direction swerved to avoid the other car and my quarter of the car actually hit the Bandit car no recollection of that at all I was so focused on the back seat passenger and then what happened is um the alpha car that caused the Bravo that caused the subject to start breaking early so the alpha car is too far ahead um and and everything stopped and froze for a couple of seconds while everyone what's happening there so then the Bandit car starts to drive forward um and the Bravo car starts to drive forward and eventually puts the blocking and the the Charlie car realizing that there's too much of a gap at the front Rams the back of the subject vehicle so the Bravo car then has to move forward so it wasn't my recollection was I mean it was correct to a certain degree but I didn't know any of I I didn't even know that we'd had a contact with the vehicle I didn't certainly didn't know anything about the vehicle coming towards us when you watch the film you almost so what were the Press calling you at that time what were the names they weren't calling me anything because although they knew it was me yeah um they were required by law to refer to me as echo7 okay so um what what happened was um I I started to know things were going to go wrong about a year a year or so after the incident so we're 2006 now yeah it would have been about 2006 there was a there had been a shooting the teams have been involved in a on an anti-terrorist job um and the ipcc were in the building along with a woman called Sue Acres who was the commander in charge of um Professional Standards so like Internal Affairs to use an American expression so I I wanted to speak to both of them because I knew that the ipcc guy was the guy that was in charge of my case I still hadn't got the all clear from the CPS at this point and I knew that Sue Acres as head of uh Internal Affairs would might also have some insight into how long it was going to be before the cramp prosecution service gave me the all clear because I was waiting to go and go work for the foreign office um so I spoke to the ipcc blo and he said oh Tony I'm glad you're here he said I'll give you a little update he took me into a corner and said there's going to be a problem he goes because um your statements are so heavily redacted because it transpired that the vast majority of the intelligence we were being given had come from a technical Source almost certainly phone taps yeah but I don't know that and if I did know and I told you I'd be breaking the law under a thing called Ripper which stands for the regulation of investigative Powers act so any reference in the statement to things that we could only have known by phone tap had been crossed out our statements we didn't cross them out somebody like within the investigation team had been given the job of redacting these statements so what happened is any any fatality you know particularly in these circumstances will have to go to a coroners Court so it went to the coroner's court and the coroner took one look at the statements and said I can't put this in front of a jury because the jury aren't going to understand why the police officer shot the suspect because all of his justification for doing so is redacted and even me under Ripper even the coroner couldn't look at it yeah um so that left everyone in a bit of a quandry including the government um so the labor government I think it was a labor government at the time it was it was Blair government uh they lost out to the um Tory liberal thing didn't they um so they always like don't know what to do with this you know this this job is going to bite us because we don't So eventually they had to change the law um so I knew then 2006 it was going to present a problem um and it wasn't until they created this uh new bit of legislation which allowed a senior high court judge to sit in the absence of a jury listen to all the evidence and um make a decision as to whether or not I acted lawfully or not and that didn't happen until seven years after the incident we should spended that whole of that time no because I I retired so basically I should have retired in 70 in 2005 because I didn't know what was going to happen I lost the job with the foreign and Commonwealth office I stayed in the in the on the teams for another two years three years so I didn't retire until 2008 then I worked for like in the commercial World um so I left in 2008 I think it was about 2014 2013 2014 I gave evidence at this this public inquiry so nine years later you gave evidence yeah and then the trial was 10 years ler my God because what happened was that 72y old retired high court judge clearly quite a liberal person in his background not a criminal lawyer by by by you know his career was in the Civil courts and he listened to all the evidence and decided that while I had an honestly held belief that AEL Rodney uh might have been armed it was unlawful of me to shoot him um and certainly to have shot him as many times as I did and he decided and he did say in the report that he that was based on um a measure based on civil law as opposed to Criminal law uh which is which is more LAX civil civil law you are allowed to give opinion you're allowed to give hearsay evidence all things that you can't do in a criminal court but he said based on that level of evidence he thought I'd acted unlawfully and so but that was his only that that was the end of it as far as he was concerned but his inquiry was set up two years before we even gave evidence so for two years him another Barrister and some solicitors and some technical experts from Northern Ireland retired police officers from Northern Ireland had basically decided that i' had acted unlawfully before before we even got to give our evidence you know they' done reconstructions and basically been playing Miss Marple for two years so by the time we we came to give our evidence I'm pretty sure that he went well that doesn't correlate with what I think happened and so in his eyes I was guilty so it then had to go back to the crown prosecution service and the crown prosecution service went we looked at this in 2006 and we thought he acted lawfully and a silk decided he acted lawfully but now we've got a judge who's had a public inquiry who's listened to all the evidence and he's decided that echo7 acted unlawfully what we going to do and I think they just went let jury decide right so were you still confident at that time when you when they you thought I just let the jury decide well no it's interesting there's 12 random people there it's interesting so throughout the public inquiry um thing the the police Federation which is like our Union had got me a solicor and got me a a barrister and they represented me in in the public inquiry and I was in the Box giving evidence at the public inquiry for a whole day and and were was Asel Rodney's family all there his mother was together with one of her friends no one else was allowed in um it was filmed so it was live feed to another room where the press and everyone else could sit in but that live feed didn't show the witness box so you could hear what I was saying yeah but the members of the public wouldn't be able to see me because we all the whole team had anonymity yeah um so this whole eight years no one knew what you looked like no one knew what I looked like in fact the only the Press didn't even know what I look like because all what they done is they based their their um what who they thought I was from a photograph on the balcony of that Siege North Al and they'd actually put a circle around the wrong blob right okay um so but it's interesting I'd had press interest at one point I went on a murder inquiry in the Caribbean and I news that the chief crime correspondent and from The Daily Mail or the Sunday mail and a photographer came out um to do spend a week with us on this Caribbean island St kits um to because it's investigation was like it was quite a sexy investigation it was like the sort of thing you'd make a film out and we were out there provide doing a protective role but we were also acting as like sort of Junior detectives taking statements and all this sort of stuff and these press guys I mean it's a small island um there weren't many any uh EUR Europeans around and they lavished us with drinks and food they never we never put our hand in her pockets for two weeks you know and um but he called me Tony every day and I called him by his first name and um and then I gave him and the photographer a lift to the airport the detective in charge said Tony you're you're spared today can you take them to the airport so I took him to the airport he said thanks very much T he shook my hand and uh I left him I went back to the the base um and I'm sitting in the the murder inquiry office and the phone rings and I picked the phone up and I said yeah murder inquiry PCY long speaking and the voice on the other end went gotcha and I said sorry who's this and he said sounds so there was this the Press guy was ringing from the airport he said um I didn't realize you were Tony long I'm going to come back and interview you and I went you can [ __ ] off put down you can do one so the Press knew who I was and because I'd been involved in in these two what had been by the time very high-profile incidents um you know they so they knew who I was I mean someone obviously told him you know who I was the echo 7 was actually Tony long what sort what sort of Ripp effects did this what sort of Ripple effects happened around London at this time a shooting of Rod Rodney well so I think what really screwed me was in two I shotel Rodney in 2008 um and I had the good fortune or common sense or whatever to shoot dead um a young black criminal in a predominantly middleclass Jewish neighborhood so in all honesty no one give a [ __ ] no one had heard of AEL Rodney he did his name didn't even register you know yes there was a report you know when he when he was named the young man BL um but no no one didn't get beyond the fifth page of the newspaper but then what we had was um the shooting of the young black man in Hackney which caused all the riots yeah in what 2011 just before the Olympics wasn't it yeah what was his name I shouldn't really know his name um um they were huge RS yeah I was living in Brixton at the time and it kicking off everywhere well it kicked off all over the country didn't there was RS in Manchester helicopter was shot at in Manchester um oh my God I can't think of his name I'm having in a blank spot anyway dougen dougen Mark Dugen Mark Doug so consequently while my shooting caused no ripples whatsoever as soon as the mark Dugen incident happened and the Press went who else would a police shot and everything else zel Rodney sort of got lamped in yeah with the whole du thing and the public inquiry into my shooting was taking place when the Dugan inquiry happened right and so I'm pretty certain that that colored everything in relation to my my one um and and I think that's probably why the CPS when they looked at it the second time decided that they were going to put it in front of the jury um so yeah um were you confident going in on that say that the jury weren't going to send you down for murder so well it's interesting because between my shooting uh in fact it was just before I I decided to retire I've been offered a job in the commercial World um and um I went home from work having told them right that's it I've been given a job offer I'm leaving the job and I found an official looking envelope on my on my doorstep uh and it was jury service at cro and Crown Court and I was still a serving police officer but I thought that'd be interesting I'll go and do jury service oh my God have you ever done jury service I've heard what a revelation i' have never done anything contentious as Sho picked up a gun if you knew how a jury operated you know they were literally finding people guilty or not guilty based on what day of the week it was yeah well if it's Thursday like you know half of us find him guilty yeah and half of us think he's not guilty well if we just make a decision today that'll give us Friday Saturday Sunday off that'll give us a long weekend right really you know someone's Liberty at stake here so I wasn't overly confident in fact when they told me it was going to be a judge sitting without a jury I thought thank for that yeah you know an intelligent man like a judge but as I was given my evidence like I said I was in the witness box all day and I had a barrass and had a lawyer solister with me and I had a particularly hostile barister representing the family um it wasn't it wasn't an easy thing but I I knew that I performed well if I want of a better word and the reason I that is because you know I was my own expert witness I'd been a police Firearms instructor since 1983 you know I knew the law on the use of force inside out I knew what our policy was on shooting and and you know post incident procedure and everything else uh and I was quite satisfied that I'd answered all the questions in exactly the right way but I could just tell by the judge's body language and the questions he was asking me that he hadn't got it yeah and uh we went out the back of to the court when I obviously they they had the court set up as I already described but there was a police area where you could get smuggled out of the Court without the Press catching you outside the building and I went out to that area there and there were coppers on the Protection Team and other witnesses there they're all that tiny brilliant that was your evidence was spot on you know I was like okay cheers thanks you know and then my bar came out with a solister and the barister said Tony that is the most professional witness uh evidence we've ever heard from a uh police Firearms officer and the the solicitor said we had high expectations Tony and you smashed it and I went he didn't get it and I went what do you mean you didn't get it I went the judge didn't get it oh no no no he was silly of course he did I said I'm telling you now he didn't get it anyway they took me off for a very nice lunch or dinner by that time um and still during dinner I'm insistent you and then no no Tony Tony well you just got that gut feeling you're just you're digging yourself out you don't know you definitely you know anyway like uh a year or so later whenever it was that he uh um announced his findings I had to go to the bar's Chambers with melister and she said you are absolutely 100% right so when they made the decision to charge me um and put it before a jury I'd kind of changed my mind I was like thinking to myself do you know what um even a jury made up of butchers Bakers and Candlestick makers and Housewives and God knows what else you know this isn't just a minor assault in a nightclub in croin they're listening to this is this is like you know it's a murder trial you know it's not one person's opinion it's 12 people's opinion and I think I'd rather put my hands in you know bear in mind I I said this I think I I think I put it in the book you know that for the whole of my service you know uh the public that put faith in me you know put their lives in my hand and now I was going to have to do the same you know I was going to have to sit there and let them listen to the evidence and let them make a decision about whether I'd acted correctly or not and I thought you know what I think the vast majority of the public are going to go well [ __ ] is El Rodney you know he you know he knew what the score was he had three guns in the vehicle with him and his two mates and they were off to Rob someone you know unfortunately that's and your duty was to protect yeah yeah absolutely so and protect my colleagues protect the public protect the drug dealers so yeah uh but but being charge was definitely and the trial itself was you know I I was confident reasonably confident that little man on your shoulder going hold on what happens if not what that feeling what you were talking about going if I do get banged up you're going to be seen as a Cooper yeah in a naughty prison yeah there's going to be three monkeys on mopeds using my [ __ ] as the Ring of Death mate you're going to you ain't going to last long in there no did that go through your mind yeah it did uh it came home to me a little bit when the very first court appearance I had when they when they charged me I didn't charged me but when they read out the charges to me what were the charges murder just pure murder pure murder they tried when it got to the old B to offer up an option of of manslaughter I no [ __ ] off you know no I'm not giving the the jury well right it's not fine it's fine G manslaughter but yeah when I first stood up in the um uh what was it westmin the magistrates Court um the plan was that my old unit bearing in mind i' been out of the job for quite some time now they were they worked out a plan to smuggle me into the building so they'd spoken to Ciro which is the civilian company that runs the courts in London it used to be a police thing you know it wouldn't have been a problem back in the 80s or 90s because the court all the security in the court was police officers so you would have gone to the court inspector and gone right we need to get this police officer in covertly and get him out covertly well CCO agreed to it but then when we pulled up at the back gates in a covert vehicle they went you ain't coming in here no there nothing we don't know anything about it so I was seen by the everybody in the court was in a in a box was handcuffed to guard well not handcuff to a guard but handcuff um and taken out in handcuffs taken down to the cells and so the team went down they went right we're taking him to the Al B because he's got to be seen before a judge because only a judge can grant bail for murder yeah and went he's our little puppy now you know we transport him to prison uh to the Old Bailey so they I'm pretty sure they liberally dragged their heels cuz there was a little window of opportunity where this judge was prepared to see me and Grant me bail and they just kept putting it back and putting it back and putting it back and eventually I got put on the prison van you know and I've got all the photographers running up alongside trying to take pictures through the window you know all this what going through your head at that moment mate I was threaders I was like what the [ __ ] is going on here I was Pro I wasn't I don't know how I felt I was like it was really bizarre it's like you know any criminal that's been in a similar position will probably tell you the same story but you know he used to living outside and it was I remember it was a it was a bright sunny day and everyone was out it was lunchtime like everyone was out on the pavement and you know enjoying their sandwiches sitting on a bench and people going past on bicycles and there's me in a suit crammed into this little box at the cuffed up well I wasn't cuffed up in in the truck but thinking [ __ ] hell um what I didn't know was that the team were following and every time the security van and the security van driver the Circo driver was trying to lose them at lights so he pulled up at the lights you'd wait till the lights were about to change and then go but they were just putting the blue lights on and they stuck with them all the way to the Old Bailey and the entrance to the Old Bailey like the vehicle entrance is a big obviously big gate but you then go down a ramp a curly ramp and you get to the bottom and it's um one of those there's not much space down there at all but there's one of those big um uh wheels that you park the truck on and you literally manhandle it around and so when we get down the bottom there I can hear the as we're going down the ramp the female custodian in the back of the truck is saying to the driver who the [ __ ] do they think they are they' followed us down here and when I tell you they think they are they think they're the [ __ ] police that's who they think they are so when I got taken out the back of the truck in handcuffs it was basically like four guys from the vet the the S so9 nose to nose with four Circo blocks going we're [ __ ] coming in yeah and in the end there's this big RA in the the lobby the entry prisoner entry area and the team leader the SR9 team leader um said right I ain't leaving him when they're going to be you got to we're going to put him in a Cale and he said well then I'll go in the [ __ ] Cale with him well you can't take your phone so he Lally took his phone out his pocket [ __ ] H it at the Ciro guy and he ended up sitting in the cell with me for about an hour and we kind of giggled like school kids it was just so bizarre um and then when it was all over I was granted bail um and they took me back to the operational base where there was a load of beer fact there was some beers there was a some one have gone out and got creat beers were a bit warm but there were some cold beers back at the base um but the interesting thing was that the judge that the back the court was pretty well empty except the back row of the where you know punter is sit in the court was made up of about 12 members of the press uh and the judge was sort of commenting on that various things came up my bail but my anonymity came up uh because once I was charged I would lose that anonymity but the anonymity had been granted me by the home secretary yeah so it was going to have to be the Home Secretary that took that anonymity away but the um he then turns to the press and he goes uh members of the press um are you represented today and um they kind of looked at each other and some woman from the BBC go stands up and say no we're not represented but I'll speak for us all uh we think he should have his an anonymity taken away from him because we want to report on it today I don't think why is the judge asking the Press yeah and my my concern was I was going to lose my anonymity the Press were on to to me and I'm thinking I need to keep my address yeah secret CU otherwise I'm going to get the Press parked up on my thing and you know not only the Press may be friends and family members coming after you that's the bit I'm trying to get to I'm thinking on a minute that's my biggest concern but obviously the Press are going to lead them to lead them too but my my biggest concern hold on a minute the mom's clocked you the Press are just going to come out here all these mates it's been six five six seven eight years and you've been under the radar all of a sudden you're on top of the radar potentially could get better hang up yeah know and and had I had I been allowed to it's interesting so what would they have given you what would they have given you for murder live there's no option but live what 25 yeah yeah live and how old were you at the time uh I was born in 57 and the trial was in 2015 so your maass is probably better than mine I was probably 50 how old are you today I'm 66 now 66 okay minus 8 okay you you 50 57 5 rly around that age and you're going to get 20 Jesus yeah yeah interesting do you ever have the fear of anyone at that time coming after you and trying to get revenge and whatever you or do you think it had been so long of anonymity that it sort of under the carpet my I've lived [Music] at five addresses yeah since my first shooting in 1985 and the Met police have provided security at since the second one so 1987 so I've had um direct Panic alarms to 9999 um you know written response plans to my address um CCTV cameras live feed on my address for most of my a good percentage of my service you know um part of me you know I am my wife's quite shrewd you know um but we're not going to let it sort of ruin our lives you know I live my life perfectly normally but you just have to be a bit more alert yes I think to myself not so much because I have had people trying to track me down there was one one guy who was um a private investigator but he turned out he just a bit of a Nutter but he had a he' had an issue with police shooting since the 1960s um and he just basically would turn up on the doorstep of a family whose wife been who loved one been shot by the police you know and gone right you know I'm going to work for you for nothing and he'd find out where the police officers were living or this I had this guy turn up at New Scotland Yard um saying that he wanted me and the officer inv best in charge of the Avatar case to be produced at New Scotland Yard on Day date time and place so that he could carry out a citizen's arrest I mean the problem was he was written off as a bit of a Nutter but I'm thinking to myself yeah well as to The Nutters you need to be concerned about of course because you know I don't know it's like you know it's a long long time ago and I'd like to think that you know the families have gone well you know our lad was a Roman he was doing robberies you know is it really you know in our interests to have you ever seen the mom apart from that day in court Rodney's yeah yeah so she was at court every day with all her sons in the Old Bailey and have to say that she acted impeccably she's actually quite a well spoken woman and her basic take on it was I expect I accept that my son was for a long period of time she wouldn't accept that her son was a Roman absolutely wouldn't because the two guys in the car with him um they were they were given bird for conspiracy to commit uh POS unlawful possession of firearms and conspiracy to Rob um and they only did about six years and they were out and of course she was really bitter about that because she didn't she didn't know any of the storyline and because of all of these issues around um uh Ripper and you know the evidence being inadmissible no one would turn around and tell her look this is what happened at one point I could be perfectly honest I I started doing a bit of detective work so I'm out of the job now I'm a civilian I'm working in like I said you know in in the private sector and um I actually found her mobile number out because she was um I think some was a talented footballer and or had been before he got some injury or something and he played for a certain club and I can't remember quite what the connection was but I think she wanted to to do a trophy in in his memory or something for the club to play but it was something like that probably got that wrong but but she said was anybody you know knew as you know you can contact me on this number and I seriously thought about ringing her up you know with a dodgy Jordy accent or something saying look you need to know what happened that day cuz I'm a parent you know my son's in the military you know if he if he you know he done some seriously dangerous [ __ ] in his service um but if the if the old Bill shot him say he was having a bit of a mental health crisis something you know i' I'd absolutely want to know why I'd like to think that once I'd heard the evidence I'd go right okay well they didn't have any option you know but she didn't know any of that um and so you know she was like speaking out about a son and how he was just an innocent and he was in the car and he didn't have a gun he didn't do this he didn't that he and and it was all total bollocks he was up to his ears in it um but when I was charged so when I was found when I was not found guilty but when the judge at the inquiry decided I'd acted unlawfully she was like Happy Days yeah that's all I wanted he you know he acted unlawfully du du so of course then when it I got charged she was equally happy and then when she went to court I'm fairly certain that she thought I was going to get convicted um but her and her three sons you know big Lads they all bizarrely that see the the Old Bailey is designed for criminal serious criminal cases and the vast majority of s serious criminal cases the person is brought to court in a prison van from prison because they're on remand because I've been very unusually granted baale because I was a police officer and it was the circumstances were totally different um the Court isn't designed for PE for uh for the actual defendant to get into the box from the civilian side so when we had a break when the judge went out or whatever you know I'd be going outside and I'd be talking to my barters and on the other side of the lobby she'd be there talking to her bar this and they positioned her her and her family right next to the steps for me to get back in the box so I'd have to come back in and I know excuse me and they they always just steps out the way no one said anything or anything else she she lost it a bit at one point during um Lo she lost it during the public inquiry um I actually became quite tearful in the public inquiry I was giving my evidence and I I wasn't expecting it at all it just came out of the blue and um could I've never shed a tear over anything like this before I was giving my evidence and I was describing how we pulled AEL Rodney up into the upright position and I saw a gunshot wound I you know burst into tears or anything but there was a bit of equiv in my voice and I had to stop for a second and she obviously thought I was putting it on cuz she shattered something I didn't hear what she shed she stormed out of the court and there was another occasion at the Old Bailey where um the prosecution made a point or something like that and she shouted something out I I think it was during the judges suming up actually the judges judge was summing up and she she thought something he'd said wasn't fair or something so she said said something I think she was ushered out of the Court quietly not kicked out but you know you need to leave sort of thing um so yeah the interesting thing is I obviously um my life was turned upside down um in my eyes because you know and this was an anger I felt at the scene we didn't talk about this earlier but when I was sitting at the scene and I'm looking at everything that's happening in front of me from the from the back of that control ship as as the time went on you know Z Rodney ambulance turned up he was basically declared dead and a red ambulance blanket was put over him and uh I just I was just angry you know angry at yourself or angry at situation or angry him you know here I am literally yards away from the Finishing Line 30 years in the police got a good job to go to and you your selfish Git You know of you know you've taken the shortcut to to riches by going and rob a Colombian drug dealer and you forced me in the position where I've had to shoot you and now I just know that my world is going to be on hold yeah I didn't think it was going to be on hold for as long as it was um but yeah so I was how many years was your life unhold for well I say life unhold I mean that was my perception at the time but KN that's on the back of your mind you got this case coming up how long how many years in total well it was it was 10 years wow it was 10 years and how did that affect you personally your relationship with your mes your relation your kids I split up with um a girl that I was in a relationship I was living with but I can't really blame that on Asel Rodney to be honest it was you know would you ever would you ever have a conversation of AEL Rodney's mom yeah under the right circumstances yeah yeah yeah whether she'd want to I don't know what would you say if you saw her well I wouldn't apologize I'd apologize for her you know her loss yeah but I wouldn't apologize for doing what I had to do yeah you to my my mind it's like you know you made the decision that you weren't going to go and get a decent job and and you living the hard way you were going to be you were going to be a Crim and you were going to go out and rip off other drug dealers you know you would have been quite happy to murder them you know that would that would be I think my my attitude on it probably wouldn't be quite as brutal if I was speaking to yeah touching back on on what we were just talking about anonymity and everything um I lost my anonymity as soon as I got charged the day I got well not this the the day I got charged basically the decision was made that I was going to lose my anonymity it took a week or so because the home office had to get involved to take that away from me um but essentially um as soon as it looked like I was going to get charged I lost my anonymity um and from that point on um social media the Press so much has been written about me that was total bollocks um that I thought well the cat's out the bag now had you allowed me to keep my anonymity and you know we've got child sex offenders that have been grooming people in the north of this country who are allowed to keep their anonymity right the way through me right the way through the end of the trial and yet I can't for doing what I was trained to do and what I was expected to do um so as soon as I lost my anonymity as far as I was concerned that was gloves off yeah if I'd been allowed to keep my anonymity and it had gone through the courts and I'd been acquitted I would have never ever written my book okay but you just wanted to get your voice out there and tell tell the story absolutely you know I be tell a classic example yeah so as need's been shot I'm in my previous relationship um and as I said it was a bit Rocky and we both decided that we were going to take a break book into a nice hotel in CH for the weekend uh and we were going to talk about things and you know go for walks and you know try and remedy what was wrong and uh we literally just sat down we driven down in the afternoon we sat down in the dining room um and my phone goes off and she looks at me you know and I went I'm going to have to answer this and I went out and it was the post incident uh office where I was based and I went tell you need to know that news of world are going to write an article about you oh I said well they can't I've got anonymity but they they think they they they can get around there did your H syn at that moment so [ __ ] sake I said all right okay I said what's happening and they said right you're going to get a phone call from um a barrister or a lawyer at the Met police Federation lawyers are you happy to take the phone call I said yeah fine so I went back I sat down 30 seconds later take this call yeah went outside and he goes right okay Tony they can't write about you um he said but they they they want to use your nickname I said right what nickname are they going to use they're going to call you the Met's very own serial killer so I had various nicknames that I've been given Over The Equalizer um the Mets own serial killer there's loads of nonsense hit man all that all that sort of crap so they said he they said they're going to call you something are you happy for him to be called Tony you just just used the name Tony and I went yeah going in I was pretty worned down by this point so the next morning got up went down to the news agents bought the news of the world went home put a coffee on open the news of the world I am known as dirty Tony and it's literally got you know the officer known in the dark humor of his colleagues from The Specialist Firearms teams as dirty Tony I was like [ __ ] sake so I'd had all of this and that's why that's why I wrote the book um you know what's the name of the book it's called lethal force and where can people find that find it on Amazon um occasionally I saw I went off to Greece about four weeks ago and I saw it I saw it in Gatwick in W Smith but yeah I mean the book came out in 2016 yeah it came out at the same time as a Channel 4 documentary um the things were linked um so it came out um uh basically covering my career in in the Firearms unit um and that was called secrets of a police Marksman um and as far as I'm aware it's still on YouTube I think yeah so there's very if you tap in Tony long on YouTube you you you'll various stuff come up yeah Tony I've really enjoyed this episode good thank you for your honesty my pleasure uh it's really nice to hear your whole 30-year career and that last story just told us there about Mr Rodney is a powerful story for for many many reasons and uh I really appreciate you coming down here what pleasure yeah you're a gentleman thank you good man Che time

Channel: Dodge Woodall

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Id: YzDs8BRvbXQ

Length: 103min 45sec (6225 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024