ANTI-DRUGS CHIEF LED DOUBLE LIFE AS DEALER

Agency In Disarray As Operation Ends In Jailing Of Former Team Leader

One of the biggest anti-drug agencies in the country was in disarray last
night after a former manager admitted being in possession of half a kilo of
heroin with intent to supply and was jailed for seven years.

Addaction - formerly known as the Association for the Prevention of
Addiction - had investigated complaints that Dave Francis, 37, who ran
their crack awareness team in Nottingham, was an active professional
dealer. They disciplined staff who complained about his behaviour and
attacked the Guardian which exposed Francis as a dealer in May 1997.

Sentencing him at Nottingham crown court, Judge Dudley Bennett told
Francis: "You more than anybody else should have known the misery of people
who have become addicted. I have to deal with people day after day in this
court who appear before me after committing crimes to fund their drug
habit." A second charge of conspiracy was left to lie on the file.

Although the events which led to Francis's arrest occurred after he left
the agency, evidence collected by the Guardian and by Nottingham detectives
leaves no doubt that Francis was dealing under cover of the agency for
nearly four years, and continued to deal on a city-wide scale after the
Guardian forced him to resign in 1997.

While Francis managed the crack awareness team, posing as a crusader
against drugs, he organised regular supplies of crack cocaine and heroin to
addicts in the city, including those who had come to the team for help. He
also dealt in stolen goods, firearms and prostitutes. He employed a second
dealer, Henry Warner, as his deputy and allowed the team's office to be
used for drug-taking.

Police believe that, while he was running the agency, he became one of the
biggest dealers in the Midlands, controlling an illegal organisation of
more than 100 workers in Nottingham.

In the summer of 1996, a group of Francis's colleagues made written
complaints to the agency about his activity. Twenty other professionals in
the city expressed anxieties about him.

His lifestyle ran far ahead of his income. He earned A321,000 a year from
the agency and yet he drove a A349,500 Mercedes, had two homes in
Nottingham, wore a A330,000 watch and sported diamonds drilled into his
front teeth.

The then head of the city's major crimes unit said publicly that he was
100% certain that Francis was an active dealer. But when the parent agency,
Addaction (then APA), finally held an internal inquiry, they concluded in
March 1997 that there was no evidence against him.

"He's a good guy as far as we're concerned," the agency's then chairman,
Sir Geoffrey Errington, said at the time. "These things were rumours. There
was no hard evidence."

Addaction, which still receives annually UKP3.5m of public and charitable
funds, continues to claim that there is no evidence that he committed any
offence while he worked for them.

Since Francis was exposed, the agency, which includes the wife of the
former home secretary, Michael Howard, on its board, has won new home
office contracts to work with drug users in prison. After being exposed by
the Guardian, Francis resigned from the crack awareness team and continued
to deal on a huge scale, flaunting his wealth and power.

Nottingham police reacted by setting up a "total surveillance operation",
codenamed Odin, which was of such unprecedented scale that finally it not
only arrested Dave Francis but took out 134 of his alleged associates and
dealers.

Detectives say that Francis's role in the crack awareness team directly
assisted his rise to power. According to one detective: "It gave him a
perfect excuse if he was ever caught with drugs or with people in
possession of drugs. It also made it much more difficult for us to hassle
him, because he had political connections in the city." Tapes from
Francis's house showed he had been running crimes in the city for years.

Before he was hired by Addaction, he had headed a team of armed robbers
from the Meadows estate and he had already been convicted of more than 30
offences involving burglary, theft, firearms, unlawful sexual intercourse
and possession of drugs. He told Addaction that he had become a Christian
and he was given access to some of the most vulnerable people in the city
and a budget of more than A3170,000 of public money. He attended planning
meetings with senior police and was invited to give evidence to a
parliamentary select committee.

'Bags and bags of weed'

In the autumn of 1995, five current and former staff filed written
allegations, accusing Francis of dealing in heroin and cocaine, of trading
in firearms and supplying women for prostitution. Witnesses detailed
incidents where Francis had been seen with "bags and bags of weed" and huge
quantities of cash; where he had used heroin to buy stolen goods and helped
one of them to sell a firearm.

Staff complained that the subsequent inquiry was serviced by managers who
had already defended Francis and that it failed to call key witnesses.
Addaction produced a report which exonerated Francis, and threatened
leading witnesses with legal action if they repeated their allegations. One
staff member who complained was suspended for supposed racism, even though
neither Francis nor his deputy had been suspended when accused of
systematic criminal activity.

It was only when the Guardian exposed Francis and the local health and
social services withdrew their funding that Addaction was forced to
withdraw from its schemes in the city.

Addaction's chief executive, Peter Martin, told the Guardian that "any
allegation that APA or Addaction knew of, approved or condoned in any way
any such inappropriate behaviour by David Francis while he was at APA or
that we neglected our duty of care is categorically denied."

Caught red-handed by surveillance squad

During the huge Odin operation, detectives planted electronic bugs inside
one of Francis's homes with six officers manning a listening post around
the clock, set up video cameras to record his movements, clamped tracking
devices on his cars, trawled through his bank and telephone records, used
army special forces for surveillance, followed him to Jamaica and back
(even bugging his seat on the plane), hired informers on weekly wages and,
most destructive of all, used a mixed-race officer from another force to
infiltrate the community, recording sound and pictures of numerous drug deals.

By monitoring Francis so intensely, the police exposed his operation, which
turned out to be a highly organised corporate structure, headed by Francis
and a group of lieutenants who formed what police call an army council.
Each lieutenant was responsible for supplying a different area of the city
through his own network of middle men and street dealers.

Francis organised the supply: sometimes through his Nigerian contacts in
London, sometimes through a Midlands gypsy who has become a millionaire
from armed robbery and drug deals, sometimes through delivery "mules" whom
he escorted to Jamaica. In a six-week period just before his arrest,
Francis moved seven kilos of heroin into Nottingham.

The police bugs recorded Francis playing the part of the conventional
entrepreneur, urging his men to be the quickest, the cheapest and the most
reliable suppliers in the city.

He and his lieutenants held monthly board meetings at safe houses on the
Meadows estate, where many of them had been born, to discuss supply lines
and pricing. He warned his men: "Be paranoid."

But the bugs recorded his every move recruiting new workers, haggling over
money, organising supply, plotting to cut out the competition and then
spending hours watching old soaps on cable television.

Finally, on February 23 last year, detectives heard Francis discussing the
sale of a load of heroin that was due from London that night. They sent one
surveillance team to follow the London suppliers as they drove up the
motorway, and another team to Francis's flat in the city centre. With the
key players all in place, the detectives took the door off its hinges and
found their target with a carrier bag containing half a kilo of 67% pure
heroin. Francis also had a roll of cash which were so heavily stained with
heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and ecstasy that the traces went off the
scale of their laboratory equipment.

Police arrested a total of 134 suspected dealers, including Francis's
former crack awareness team deputy, Henry Warner, who last year admitted
possessing heroin with intent supply.