ELITE POLICE DRUG SQUAD ARE JAILED FOR DRUG DEALS

One of Britain's biggest police corruption cases came to a close
yesterday with the conviction of members of an elite police squad. The
detectives, at the forefront of the fight against drugs, were
convicted of selling narcotics they had seized in the course of their
duties.

Thomas Kingston, 42, and Thomas Reynolds, 39, who were detectice
constables with Nine South-East Regional Crime Squad (Sercs) based at
East Dulwich, south London, were jailed for three-and-a-half years at
the Old Bailey in London yesterday for conspiracy to supply a class B
drug.

A sergeant on the same squad, Terance O'Connell, 43, was jailed for
two years for committing acts tending or intending to pervert the
course of justice. He had known what the others were doing and
falsified a report, the court was told. He was earlier acquitted of
conspiracy on order of the judge.

The three are the last members of the Sercs to come before the courts
accused of corruption. Their ringleader, Robert Clark, was jailed for
12 years at the Old Bailey in February. His "enthusiastic" lieutenant,
Christopher Drury, was jailed for 11 years. Their sentences were
revealed for the first time yesterday because of pending
proceedings.

The scale of corruption in the squad in the mid-Nineties was only
exposed after a drugs baroness, Evelyn Fleckney, 44, turned supergrass
and provided the Police Complaints Investigation Bureau with details
of her dealings with Clark. Fleckney had fallen under Clark's spell in
early in the decade when she was arrested and turned informer. The two
became lovers and she began to sell drugs that he and his colleagues
had seized.

However, when she was jailed for 15 years in 1998 for a separate drugs
offence, she decided to tell police about her relationship with Clark
and the Sercs which spanned half a decade. During the trial she
admitted that she had loved Clark.

It was with tips from Fleckney that Clark put himself above and
outside the law. He appeared not to have been kept in check by his
superior officers, a point the judge singled out for criticism at his
trial.

Orlando Pownall, for the prosecution, told the court: "There was no
supervision, and through the lack of supervision there grew a sense of
arrogance, a feeling that [the Sercs members] were
untouchable."

Clark, who lead the team which styled themselves "the groovy gang",
told the court for his defence: "If you were producing the work, the
team did not need supervision. The Regional Crime Squad was very
professional, very renowned and were expected to produce quality
results. You would not sit in the office AD you would go out looking
for work."

As the investigation got under way, another Sercs officer "wrestled
with his conscience" and decided to tell all he knew of the corruption
which penetrated the squad.

The evidence from Detective Constable Neil Putnam became the main
prosecution plank in the trials of his colleagues. Putnam was jailed
for three years and eleven months and Fleckney for four and a half
years in February for their parts in drug dealing. Putnam, a devout
Christian, is now free. Fleckney's sentence was to run concurrently
with her 15-year term. Mr Justice Blofeld said at the time that if
police turned to crime, "the whole fabric of society was affected".

The judge said: "If an elite squad AD which Sercs at Dulwich was AD
there to try and catch the most sophisticated criminals who sadly
abound in society turn to crime, their whole efforts are aborted and
society suffers." He criticised the lack of supervision by senior
officers which had allowed the detectives to put themselves above the
law. "There is little indication they were themselves effectively
supervised either," he said.