FLYING SQUAD OFFICERS ADMIT CRIME CAREER

Two former Flying Squad officers have admitted carrying out a series of
crimes ranging from setting up robberies to perverting the course of
justice, it emerged yesterday. The pair are in safe houses helping the
Metropolitan police's anti-corruption drive.

Details of their life of crime can be published for the first time, at the
conclusion of the first trial resulting from the Met's crackdown. A third
former Flying Squad officer was cleared at the Old Bailey yesterday of
aggravated burglary and conspiracy to supply cannabis.

His former colleague's admissions represent an important breakthrough for
Sir Paul Condon's anti-corruption operation. The commissioner has said that
up to 250 officers in his force could be corrupt. Forty-nine have been
suspended and 12 serving and former officers have been charged.

After the verdicts, John Stevens, the Met's deputy commissioner, said:
"Corruption will not be tolerated." Former and serving officers who engaged
in crime would continue to be targeted.

Terry McGuinness, aged 40, from Forest Gate, east London, a serving
detective constable, pleaded guilty to nine offences between 1991 and 1997.
He admitted conspiring to steal, handling stolen cash and perverting the
course of justice.

His former colleague Kevin Garner, aged 38, from Brentwood, Essex, who left
the force as a detective constable before his arrest, pleaded guilty to 14
offences between 1992 and 1997 including conspiring to rob, conspiring to
steal, handling stolen cash, perverting the course of justice and handling a
stolen car. They will be sentenced later.

Keith Green, aged 41, from Newbury Park, Essex - also a former Flying Squad
officer - was acquitted yesterday. He told the jury he had believed he was
acting lawfully on behalf of the Argentinian embassy in a debt collection
exercise when he entered a flat with McGuinness and Garner.

He said he had no idea that the bags which he later helped to remove
contained cannabis.

McGuinness and Garner were caught as the result of a classic sting last
December set up by Scotland Yard's complaints investigation bureau. Within
48 hours of a trap being baited with 175lb of cannabis worth UKP400,000, the
two detectives had been hooked.

Anti-corruption squad officers had suspicions about Garner and McGuinness
but needed evidence against them. They acquired the two-year-old cannabis
from the police forensic laboratory, marked blocks of the drug with
indelible ink and hid them in a flat in Silvertown, east London. Video
cameras were concealed inside and outside the flat. They then let the
information about the cannabis filter back to Garner and McGuinness, who was
then stationed at Limehouse police station.

When McGuinness and two of his former Flying Squad colleagues, Garner and Mr
Green, arrived at the flat, everything was captured on film. The men were
not arrested until a few days later. About 120lb of cannabis were recovered
at a flat in Leyton, east London, on December 16 but the rest has never been
found.

McGuinness and Garner decided to co-operate with investigators. The news
that two of their own were about to 'go QE' (Queen's evidence) sent shivers
down the spines of corrupt fellow detectives. The pair have been assigned
police minders and moved to safe houses.

Mr Green told the jury he had had no idea what was in the bags. As the
foreman delivered its not guilty verdict yesterday, members of his family
and jurors wept.

Later Mr Green, who has worked as a rugby coach and a private detective
since his retirement from the police on grounds of ill health, said: "I
still believe in the Metropolitan police."

But he said he had been treated insensitively. He has been receiving
treatment for a depressive illness which, the court heard, resulted from an
incident in 1993 when he was nearly hit by a shot fired accidentally by
McGuinness during an armed police operation.

Mr Green told the court that as a result of this incident, over which he is
suing the Metropolitan police, he had suffered from depression and
flashbacks and was unable to watch police drama series on television.

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst