Paul Condon had announced to the world that there were 250 corrupt officers in the Met, so CIB3 (the Ghost Squad/ the Untouchables) were created to confirm his PR story. Tower Bridge Flying Squad were huge rivals of Rigg Approach Flying Squad. CIB3 were drawn from Tower Bridge to get convictions from Rigg Approach.Rigg Approach had been successful in getting a conviction for notorious armed robber Hector Harvey. So CIB3 contacted Harvey to see if he would make allegations against any Rigg Approach officers in return for a reduced sentence.
Harvey said the Flying Squad officers stole £300,000 that he had stolen.
He later changed the amount to £200,000.
There were holes all over his story, but never fear, CIB3 were there to coach the crook.
The only problem was that D.I. George Raison at Rigg Approach could prove Harvey’s story was lies…so CIB suspended him to stop him providing that vital evidence.
Kevin Garner was a Rigg Approach DC who had left the Met.
He was suffering PTSD.
He had been used as an undercover officer in a previous high profile case and had received death threats. He had also worked on arresting Hector Harvey.
He was ideal to be set up by CIB.
DCI Chris Jarratt began the set up.
He took 80 kilos of cannabis resin that the police had succeeded in taking off the street and promptly put them back out there.
It was his intention to ‘lose’ 26 kilos of the drugs (about £200,000 worth) and Jarratt fully admitted that.
Nobody knows where those drugs ended up.
Jarratt was even later to use this crime in his application for promotion to Detective Superintendent.
He said he had taken the drugs and lost them on purpose against all the advice of his senior officers.
So these drugs were placed into a flat in east London which police had rented out under false details.
Garner was then approached by an undercover police officer known as Irish Mick and a crook called Michael Taverner.
Garner was told to take the drugs from the flat, and was encouraged to get his own help to do so.
On 4th December 1997 Garner, along with a serving Met officer, Terry McGuinness, and a retired officer Keith Green, took the drugs out of the flat and all three were arrested.
Irish Mick was an undercover police officer but the police lied to the CPS about him, saying he was not a u/c.
The CPS accepted the police lies without questioning them.
So nothing was ever disclosed about what went on when it should have been.
The evidence would have been crucial. IT STILL WOULD BE.
Then began the torture and threats to turn the three into supergrasses.
Green was later found not guilty of the ‘theft’ of these drugs.
McGuinness and Garner succumbed.
McGuinness wasn’t as vulnerable as Garner and so contradicted a lot of what CIB had told Garner to say.
So McGuinness was dropped as a supergrass and he was never called to give evidence.
Jarratt was warned by his senior officers to stop visiting the supergrasses that CIB had locked up.
These were Neil Putnam, Duncan Hanrahan, Terry McGuinness and Kevin Garner.
They complained of visits by Jarratt and DCI Martin Bridger saying they were being threatened.
Jarratt and Bridger lied by saying they were carrying out welfare visits.
Jarratt and Bridger never made contemporaneous notes of their visits.
Jarratt took Garner’s girlfriend as a hostage.
She was threatened with a fake charge of supplying drugs and was told she would go to prison and her children would be placed in care.
Illegal search warrants for fishing expeditions were applied for when the evidence just wasn’t there.
Only when Martin Bridger and DS Adrian Harper visited Garner and waved a charge sheet for the Attempted Murder of Hector Harvey with Garner’s name typed on it did Garner succumb to CIB’s pressure and said whatever they wanted him to say.
The police knew Garner had nothing to do with the attempted murder.
Garner was so upset at the lies he was being forced to tell that he broke his hand punching it into a wall.
Dave Woods of CIB3 was then to commit perjury by using this same Attempted Murder to object to bail for the ‘Rigg Approach Three’ Eamonn Harris, David Howell and Frederick May, saying they were suspects in the attempted murder.
CIB3 knew who tried to kill Hector Harvey, it was a fellow gangster, not a police officer.
Jarratt also got the supergrasses to sack their own legal teams so he could put in his own police-friendly solicitor.
Again this is totally illegal.
Garner’s solicitor almost never sat in on any interviews.
Yet even this solicitor got fed up with CIB’s pressure.
He hit the roof when DCI Martin Bridger served Garner with a Drug Trafficking Confiscation Order , as this was against what CIB had originally promised.
The solicitor said Garner was now considering withdrawing his support as a supergrass.
So CIB withdrew the Confiscation Order.
Martin Bridger later committed perjury at the Old Bailey saying he never knew anything about a Confiscation Order.
When Bridger was told that it had been disclosed to the Defence that he had served it to Garner himself, Bridger admitted he must have done.
Garner had a nervous breakdown. A police doctor said Garner could no longer distinguish truth from fiction, but he was never allowed an appropriate adult (or his solicitor) during interviews and CIB3 still went ahead , telling Garner what to say.
Meanwhile the defence meetings of Met Police Federation Solicitors Russell Jones and Walker were being infiltrated and information was being passed to CIB. The Defence was going to call D.I. George Raison, the Rigg Approach Three’s superior officer, to prove that the money Hector Harvey alleged had been taken had never been stolen, but the CIB informant quickly passed this information on to his handlers. CIB then suspended Raison with a concocted disciplinary charge so that he was tainted and couldn’t give evidence. Immediately after the trial, Raison’s suspension was lifted.
At the Court of Appeal the Defence wanted to call Garner’s girlfriend to testify but the police paid a barrister £11,000 of public money to make sure she didn’t.
The question remains Who is Irish Mick?
Hector Harvey was a registered police informer.
Ciaran Goggins 