In early 2008 a strong batch of black heroin was hitting the streets. So called as it turned that colour when prepared for injection, it was 70 per cent pure; its lethal strength was wiping people out. Addicts are typically used to purities of around 30 per cent or less, the remaining mixture being cut with compounds such as citric acid, caffeine and sometimes brick dust. Often these adulterants kill as much as the drug itself. The death toll had suddenly doubled and, as the coroner put it, taking heroin had become like Russian roulette; users had no idea what they were taking.
Op Reduction made tackling whoever was behind this its number one priority. Through a variety of overt and covert methods, Paul and his team soon identified a gang from Liverpool who had infiltrated the drug market in Hove. Using locally known and trusted street dealers, the Mr Bigs quickly had a supply network established.
Planning the arrest of these peddlers in death was agonizing. As the users were dropping like flies, the temptation was to hit the dealers hard and fast. That would have been foolish. Swift arrests do not always lead to swift justice. We would probably have been able to nail only the lower ranks of the street dealers and there would be plenty to fill their shoes. We had to hold our nerve despite the risk of more deaths.
The evidence against the main dealers had to be unassailable. We had long since abandoned the hope of a convenient ‘cough’ in an interview, where the accused fills in all the gaps. This used to happen in the old days when villains considered their arrest a fair cop. Those days had long gone and police had to battle for every piece of the jigsaw. We now assumed the accused would keep silent and employ a range of tactics to block our discovery of more evidence. Without a fully built case, all an early arrest would achieve was a few hours’ inconvenience to the suspect and the police showing their hand.
However, one sunny May lunchtime, expert detective work and careful planning culminated in an explosive action drama erupting close to the tranquil Hove Lawns.
The evidence was finally in place, the conspiracy to supply drugs all but proved. Paul was bouncing with anticipation, ready to strike. Unbeknown to the targets, who were no doubt cursing the painfully stop-start seafront traffic, their plans for the day were about to be rudely disrupted.
It’s easy for unmarked police cars to hide in plain sight; there’s nothing like a heavy traffic jam to act as camouflage. The network of streets around the coast road allow cop cars to invisibly race into position, surreptitiously surrounding the preordained location where the arrests would take place.
The targets were showing no sign of sensing anything wrong. It had to stay that way. The crawling traffic gave the firearms commanders the upper hand; the strike had become a ‘when’, not ‘if’.
The timing had to be right, the safety of everyone paramount, the element of surprise total. The threat of force must be overwhelming. A firefight was not an option. The targets had to know resistance was futile; they could not attempt to flee.
Through carefully rehearsed procedures, everyone knew what had to be done. The operation was handed over from the Silver to the Bronze commander, the sign that the strike was moments away. Bronze’s fine judgement was now critical. Not too soon, not too late. Once he gave the order, it was the point of no return. Training took over. Everyone was poised, psyched up to swoop.
‘Strike,’ came the crisp command.
A cacophony of shouts, racing engines and the sight of scruffily dressed men donning chequered baseball caps and thrusting machine guns and pistols at them, stunned the occupants of the stationary saloon. Even if the villains did manage to muster some courage and try to break through the blockade of police cars, they had no hope.
‘Armed police! Get out of the car. Put your hands on your head.’ Bystanders fruitlessly looked round for the TV cameras or a gaudily dressed director bellowing ‘Cut’ through his megaphone.
All they saw was crestfallen drug dealers spread-eagled on the tarmac, awaiting their trip to the cells, guns pointed at their heads and their wrists bound together with cable ties. A quick search revealed £1,000 in cash stuffed in one dealer’s pockets.
A few short months later, the evidence overwhelming, justice was dispensed at Lewes Crown Court. Following their guilty pleas to conspiracy to supply heroin Liverpudlians John Lee and Karl Freeman were jailed for ten and nine years respectively. Their minions Darren Hogarth and George Wood each received two-and-a-half-year sentences for supplying heroin and crack cocaine.
A good outcome, if ever there can be one, given how many deaths these four were directly responsible for.
There are still drugs in Brighton. People still deal, people still die.
About a year before I retired, I took part in a BBC TV documentary with comedian Russell Brand, who was exploring the merits of an abstinence-based approach to drug rehabilitation. He was fascinated by the work we were doing in the city and the impact it had. Managing the hundreds of autograph hunters who besieged us as he interviewed me walking around some of the hotspots was a challenge in itself, but we got our message across clearly — users need help, pushers need jail.
In 2012, given Peter James’ passion for Brighton and Hove, his concern for the people who live in and visit the city — particularly the vulnerable — and his determination to use his profile for the good of others, he volunteered to chair a Commission to examine whether the city was doing enough to reduce the impact of drugs on its people. As the city’s Police Commander I acted as an advisor.
Peter’s leadership and vision, supported by the international drugs expert Mike Trace, enabled twenty recommendations to be put before the City Council and other services which, if adopted, would enable the city to start to reduce the number of lives that drugs wrecked, and stem the misery drugs cause.
An unforeseen by-product of the Commission’s recommendations was my being asked by the BBC to make another documentary after I’d retired. This one was to examine the Drugs Consumption Rooms operating in Frankfurt. These are supervised places where users can take their own heroin, safe in the knowledge that the equipment is clean and medics are there should things go wrong. I was asked to consider whether they would be a solution in Brighton. The horrific sights I saw of people struggling to find a working vein in their ulcerated bodies will stay with me forever. Grace visits this same Consumption Room in You Are Dead in his search for Sandy.
Frankfurt’s problems were far greater than ours and for them these Consumption Rooms have been a godsend. In the twenty years since they were established, the yearly drugs death rate has plummeted from 147 to 30. Things aren’t so bad in Brighton and providing the principles of Operation Reduction are sustained, these controversial facilities will not be needed.
Through all the hard work, the city has now lost its drugs death top spot. Crime is right down and dealers don’t stay free for long any more. The struggle goes on and I doubt it will ever be over, but if we continue to treat addiction as an illness and remain ruthless towards the dealers we will save lives. And that must be good.
15: Live or Die — You Decide
The classic 1950s image of the British bobby is that, portrayed in Dixon of Dock Green, of a portly, ruddy-faced, cheery fellow who helps the elderly across the road and clips the ears of miscreant children. Not many postcards depict the other side. Not many souvenirs show elite muscle-bound police marksmen bursting from unmarked cars and shooting gunmen dead in a rapid fire-fight.