The DPP went ahead and dropped the charge. ibid.
Head of the flying and robbery squad … obstructed Countryman. ibid.
Renewed allegations in the past fortnight of Yard corruption. ibid.
Once the Yard took over, they seized all Countryman’ secret information and witness statements. They covered at least 84 Metropolitan officers suspected of corruption and unchecked allegations against a further 107 officers. This information was stored on computers … Scotland Yard was never intended to see them. ibid.
Only one has been brought to court. ibid.
The men’s ordeal was far from over. They were next taken from their cells to the bath house ... Prison officers were charged with assaulting the six but they were all acquitted at trial. World in Action: The Birmingham 6: Their Own Story, ITV 1991
A major drug-dealing scandal on some of Britain’s meanest streets. There are claims that a serving police officer was drug trafficking. And it’s alleged other officers planted drugs on innocent people. No officer has been charged with drug offences despite growing evidence at a major police inquiry. World in Action: The Crack Connection, ITV 1992
From the ghettoes of Kingston to the streets of London and New York. Jamaican criminals are pushing crack cocaine with unprecedented violence. It’s a world police officers have found almost impossible to penetrate until they found a top informant. Scotland Yard thought they could fight fire with fire. Tonight World in Action asks, Who really got burned? World in Action: The Informer, ITV 1995
It’s a story of how Eaton Leonard Green went on a sustained spree of crack dealing, armed robbery and shootings while being paid to prevent crime. It’s the story of how the Yard allowed Green to help to Jamaicans they believed to be multiple killers into the UK. And it’s the story of how Scotland Yard obstructed another Force investigating the biggest mass robbery on record. And then tried to kill off the trial that led to his eventual conviction. ibid.
It took until 1991 for the court system to say, Oops, they had the wrong men. Men who had served for sixteen years. And it took more than another decade for them to get some kind of apology and compensation for all that time in prison. Three detectives were charged with perjury and conspiracy, but their trial was halted in 1993 on the basis of prejudicial news coverage. Who Bombed Birmingham? Granada TV March 1990
My ears were bleeding for three days in the inside after this you know. And my eyes were busted about. Head was split. My eyes were busted along. My mouth was busted inside. What a state! Richard McIlkenny
Twenty years ago Panorama investigated a bungled murder inquiry [Lynette White] that resulted in three innocent men being sent to prison for Life. Last year the case against eight officers accused of perverting the cause of justice to secure those convictions collapsed. Panorama: Justice Denied: The Greatest Scandal? ***** BBC 2012
Gafoor: The biggest scandal in the history of British justice. ibid.
A tale of murder and a major miscarriage of justice. ibid.
Last year eight police officers involved in that miscarriage have walked free from court. ibid.
The murder of twenty-two-year-old Lynette White, a well-known prostitute. ibid.
A single white-male line of inquiry. ibid.
For nine months the police had been looking for one white male suspect ... A completely new set of suspects was taken in for questioning. ibid.
Following the longest murder trial in British criminal history ... the remaining three remaining defendants, Steven Miller, Yusef Abdelahi and Tony Paris were all sentenced to life in prison. ibid.
Hostile police interviews. ibid.
The decision of the South Wales police to investigate itself ... 13 South Wales police officers were charged. ibid.
The deliberate destruction of files. ibid.
Incredibly, the documents that had apparently been destroyed mysterious turned up seven weeks after the trial had ended. ibid.
The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has sparked America’s biggest series of protests over race in a generation, highlighting once again the deep divide between black and white. With violent scenes and police forces seemingly out of control. The protests have gone global. Panorama: George Floyd: A Killing that Shook the World, BBC 2020
Could George Floyd’s death finally force America to confront the scourge of racism within? ibid.
Derek Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder. Three other officers have been charged with aiding and abetting murder. ibid.
The latest in an endless line of lives taken by violent cops. It is part of the black experience: an American tragedy. ibid.
This man died after being restrained by police. These same words were uttered two years later by George Floyd whose death sparked outrage on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK if you’re black, you’re more than twice as likely to die as a white person in police custody. Panorama investigates unanswered questions in two British deaths, and in one, reveals new allegations of police cover-up. Panorama: I Can’t Breathe: Black & Dead in Custody, BBC 2021
Cardiff 5: We are bound to say on hearing the tape we were horrified ... Short of physical violence it is hard to conceive of a more hostile and intimidating approach by officers to a suspect. Court of Appeal 1992
Cardiff 5: South Wales Police says it has asked the police watchdog to investigate after the UK’s biggest case involving alleged police corruption collapsed.
Eight former officers were cleared of perverting the course of justice at Swansea Crown Court after the wrongful conviction of three men for murder.
The judge ruled the officers and two other defendants, who were also found not guilty, could not get a fair trial.
The case follows the murder of Cardiff prostitute Lynette White in 1988.
Files relating to complaints by an original defendant were said to be missing, and the director of public prosecutions said he was ‘extremely concerned’.
The cost of the investigations and trials is thought to run into tens of millions. BBC News online article 1st December 2011
The City of New York’s subpoena of Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker whose recent project covered the wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration of five men accused of raping and beating a woman in Central Park, opens up a painful point in New York City history, and raises questions about the strength and reach of New York’s journalist shield laws. It should also open up a demand for real changes to police investigation and interrogation tactics – to preserve the rights of criminal defendants, and to protect crime victims.
More than 20 years ago, the Central Park jogger rape case roiled New York City, stoking racial tensions and fanning the flames of widespread fear and frustration with pervasive crime and violence. The jogger, a 28-year-old investment banker, was raped and brutally beaten; she barely survived. A group of five black and Latino teenage boys was implicated in the crime. Four of the five confessed on videotape. The boys later recanted, but were all convicted. The media storm around the crime and the trial latched onto the narrative of roving gangs of kids from the projects going ‘wilding’, attacking unsuspecting victims in the park and robbing them, beating them or worse.
More than a decade later, DNA evidence and the confession of the man tied to it proved the innocence of the Central Park Five. They were released from prison and saw their convictions vacated. Three of the five – now men who spent much of their adult lives in prison – filed a lawsuit against the city in 2003. It's in the context of that lawsuit that the Burns’ footage – footage that, ironically, the city did its best to prevent from being shot in the first place – has been subpoenaed. The Guardian online article 5th October 2012
Crippen: I think they’re [the evidence] planted. And I think it was planted by the police authorities. Dr John Trestrail
London police were later forced to admit that Mr de Menezes never ran from them, wasn’t wearing a heavy coat and that a special army unit had killed him execution style with over ten shots to the head at point blank range. Alex Jones, The Truth About the London Bombings
Government whistleblowers and police have also been suspended and arrested for telling the truth. ibid.
The result: the military out serving search warrants ... The military are running check-points random on the nation’s highways ... All of the key indicators of a nation in massive decline are being manifested before our eyes. Alex Jones, Police State II: The Takeover, 2000
The Guildford Four miscarriage of justice was due to individual failings among police and prosecutors and not inbuilt weaknesses in the system, the May inquiry into the affair has concluded.
Sir John May spent four and a half years deliberating on the case which shattered confidence in the British legal system, but his conclusions were greeted with disappointment. Chris Mullin, the MP who campaigned on behalf of the Four, said they were a ‘near perfect replica of the official position’ while Alistair Logan, solicitor for two of the Four, said they did not add to knowledge of the affair. The Independent online article 1st July 1994 Terry Kirby
Stephen Lawrence: watchdog to probe police ‘corruption’: Scotland Yard has called in the police watchdog following allegations that police corruption hampered the original investigation into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence.
The move comes after The Independent published police intelligence reports detailing extensive allegations of corruption against a detective, John Davidson. Following the reports, the Metropolitan Police began a trawl of documents to discover if anything was held back from the 1998 Macpherson Inquiry. The Independent 12th May 2012