Russ was steely, intelligent and a stickler for detail. He worked cheek by jowl with Don to get up to speed on what had now been named Operation Dresden. So far the focus had been predominantly on gathering intelligence. Its success relied on that intelligence being turned into evidence. That was Russ’s job.
He ploughed through the volumes of reports, the ninety-five surveillance logs, the hundreds of files on all the covert activity. His job was to draw out what would be admissible in court and fill any gaps. He approached his task with dogged determination, sharing Don’s resolve to get this gang locked up for a very long time. He knew Barratt of old, having previously arrested him for a string of burglaries.
Within a few days the planning had intensified and, after some false starts when members of the gang had overslept, it seemed the day of the robbery had arrived.
Before dawn, cops secreted themselves around Magpie Jewellers and the getaway cars, providing an all-seeing yet invisible ring of steel. Given the intelligence that the gang would be armed, the elite Tactical Firearms Unit had replaced the detectives to carry out any arrests. That meant that this potentially lethal phase of the operation was now out of Russ and Don’s hands and under a whole new command.
Where shooting, riots or disaster are likely the police put in place a very clear structure — Gold, Silver, Bronze. It’s deliberately hierarchical with the Gold (or strategic) commander giving the orders what the police should seek to achieve, the Silver (or tactical) commander determining how that should happen and the Bronze (or operational) commander having to make it happen.
The detectives wanted the raid to be allowed to run to the point where they had their evidence; the firearms commanders were only interested in safety. And safety always came first.
Thankfully the firearms Silver commander was a gutsy type. He knew that if this lot weren’t nicked for something decent, he would be running this job again somewhere else in the future. People like them do not go straight that easily.
Everything was looking promising. The gang had made their way over to The Lanes. Their anticipated counter-surveillance phase was under way — driving cars in and out of dead ends, their occupants scouring the rooftops and windows for giveaway signs that they had been found out.
All it needed was for the police to stay out of sight, letting everything appear normal, then, in the split second when the robbers were just about to attack but before anyone got harmed, they were to break cover in an awesome and overwhelming show of force, paralysing the would-be robbers into submission.
‘Bloody hell, they are leaving,’ came the incredulous comment from the officer closest to the targeted premises.
A scurry of activity confirmed their fears. Not wanting to show their hand, all the officers stayed put but it soon became clear that the gang, for no apparent reason, had all returned to their cars and headed back to Peacehaven.
The easy thing to do would be to stand down and regroup another day, but the cops had the time and the manpower to be patient.
‘Stick with it,’ barked Silver, guessing this was the gang being even more careful than usual.
Sure enough, after a short break at Aldridge’s house, the targets headed back. But in the meantime they had been plotting. Russ carried out yet another review of the intelligence and called a confidential meeting with the Silver commander.
‘I think we’ve got enough to nick them now,’ declared Russ. ‘That activity we have just seen, with everything else, gives us a cast-iron case against all four for conspiracy to rob. I am sure we will find more evidence in the car. But I don’t think we need to let them get near the shop and the public.’
‘That’s music to my ears,’ replied the Silver commander. ‘So you are happy for us to intercept them on the way into the city?’
‘For sure, but tell your lot that the forensic integrity of the prisoners and anything they find is paramount.’
‘After safety of course,’ corrected the Silver commander with a wink.
‘Of course,’ confirmed Russ.
That agreed, Silver snapped out his plan to the firearms teams.
As the car containing Aldridge and Bishop headed west towards the city centre they were tracked by armed police. Close to Roedean School, which sits on the hillside above Brighton Marina, the command came for them to be stopped.
From nowhere raced four nondescript high-performance saloons, which surrounded the stunned villains. Their shocked faces, as they took in the horror they were about to confront, told the heavily armed car crews that surrender was inevitable.
Taking no chances however, and in textbook fashion, each car slammed into the target vehicle: the perfect Tactical Pursuit and Contact (TPAC) manoeuvre that Grace considered using to stop the car that he thought contained the kidnapped Tyler in Dead Man’s Grip.
Half a dozen scruffily dressed yet heavily armed hulks sprang from the cars, their tell-tale ‘Police’ baseball caps giving away their mission.
Shouts of ‘Stop, armed police’ echoed off the cliffs as the officers thrust their deadly Heckler and Koch machine guns towards the defeated duo inside the trapped car.
‘Get your hands on the dashboard now,’ continued the command. No chance to flee, no choice but to conform.
Dragged out onto the roadway and handcuffed where they lay, the two men knew the game was up. The automatic pistol, the twenty-eight rounds of ammunition, the rope and handcuffs in the footwell ensured that. Bishop and Aldridge were well and truly bang to rights. Bloomstein and Barratt were apprehended elsewhere, with identical tactics which also scared them into submission.
This was just the start of the hard work. Many think arrests are the end of an investigation. Far from it. Making an arrest, while sometimes momentous, guarantees nothing. Arrests are made on ‘reasonable suspicion’, convictions secured on evidence ‘beyond reasonable doubt’: two legal tests that are poles apart. A justifiable hunch is enough to ‘feel a collar’. The toil to convert that into the absolute certainty the courts demand can feel like climbing Mount Everest in a deep-sea diving suit.
None of the suspects was inclined to help the police. Even Bloomstein had adopted the professional’s stance — sit and say nothing; let them prove it. The defence lawyers love this approach.
It must be very hard to defend people who are caught in such compromising circumstances and with such a weight of evidence against them. The temptation must be to urge them to plead guilty. However, there is always another way. If the evidence is damning then the only hope remains in trying to find chinks in the way it was gathered.
The Crown Prosecution Service instructed John Tanzer, now a respected judge, as prosecuting counsel. This was a smart move given that he was more than capable of handling a major conspiracy such as this. However, faced with a leading and junior barrister per defendant, he, the police and the CPS were quickly swamped with the multifarious demands for additional information and evidence all designed to overwhelm them.
During the six weeks of legal argument and voir dire — a trial without the jury to determine the admissibility of evidence — the prosecution found that they could not even say that an officer was on duty on a particular day without being challenged. The defence demanded independent proof of the fact. Despite the hundreds of hours spent observing the defendants, each surveillance officer had to prove the identity of the person they had been watching. Barratt’s counsel relied heavily on the stunning similarity his client bore to his equally errant brother. One cop became so confused that even the judge wondered whether he was telling the truth and warned him accordingly.