CALL FOR GLASGOW RAIDS INQUIRY

Exclusive: New Claims Of Misconduct By Drugs Squad

Drugs squad officers already accused of lying under oath were linked last
night to a series of raids that prompted claims of planted evidence,
brutality and perjury.

Scotland's most senior law officer has been urged to investigate new claims
of criminal misconduct surrounding the activities of the Strathclyde Police
squad in the early 1990s. Concern now centres on three raids mounted within
a few months of each other and involving several of the officers already
suspended by the force after being accused of lying to cover up the violent
beating of a suspect.

Their suspension came after Gerald Rae won 3,000 compensation in January
after claiming drugs squad officers attacked him with baseball bats and
framed him during a raid at his home in October 1990. The allegations of
violence were identical to those levelled by another suspect who also sued
the force for an alleged beating inflicted in a raid a few weeks earlier.

A third man arrested in a different operation at about the same time
was cleared of dealing charges after his young daughter told a jury
how she had seen police planting drugs in his home.

The procurator-fiscal in Glasgow is already investigating the officers'
alleged perjury during Rae's civil action.

Menzies Campbell, legal affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, called
last night for the Crown inquiry to be widened and personally supervised by
the Lord Advocate. "Claims of this kind always raise substantial issues of
public confidence in the police and only the highest standards of probity
will ensure respect for the forces of law and order," he said.

Rae, 39, and another drugs suspect, William Dennison, 40, who was jailed
for 11 years after being convicted of dealing, sued Strathclyde Police
after claiming to have been beaten up by officers in the raids in late 1990.

In a third raid, so far unreported, the drugs squad searched the home of
John Paul Muir, 38, in Milton, Glasgow, allegedly finding more than 92,000
in a holdall, a bag of cocaine and a large quantity of cannabis under the
floorboards.

But, after hearing Muir's eight-year-old daughter Natalie claim to have
seen an officer planting drugs, the jury at his trial in May 1991 took just
30 minutes to reject the evidence of a series of police officers and find
the dealing charges against him not proven. Natalie had described watching
an officer take something from a bag during the raid and put it under the
floorboards. She told the High Court in Glasgow: "I couldn't see what it
was but he was shining his torch under the floorboards and was kidding
about."

Yesterday Natalie, now a teenager, repeated her claims, saying the police
officer was unaware that she was watching him during the raid at the
family's home in Ashgill Road. "My head wasn't turned towards them but I
was looking sideways at him," she said.

In May 1991, at the time of Muir's trial, Detective Inspector John Pollock,
who led many of the raids mounted by the drugs squad at the time -
including the operation against Rae - was transferred to uniformed duties.

Rae, like Dennison and Muir, has criminal convictions for serious
offences linked to drugs and violence, but every charge linked to the raid
on his home in 1990 - where heroin with a street value of 15,000 was
allegedly found - was either dropped by the prosecution or rejected by the
jury at his trial at the High Court in Glasgow in June 1991.

After the verdict, the trial judge, Lord McLuskey, attacked the case
against Rae and, asking the Lord Advocate to investigate, said there had
"never been one iota of evidence" for one of the most serious dealing
charges against him.

Mr Pollock and the other officers involved were transferred out of the
squad in 1991, despite an internal inquiry into Rae's claims of violence
finding no evidence to support disciplinary proceedings or criminal charges
against them.

In January, Lord Marnoch awarded Rae 3,000 after hearing how two of his
neighbours witnessed the raid at his flat in Glasgow's South Side and,
hearing his screams of agony, dialled 999 believing a murder was being
committed. During his trial and subsequent civil action, the officers
denied Rae was beaten.

In the civil action brought against the Strathclyde force by Dennison, the
judge rejected his claims that police beat him up while he was handcuffed,
naked, and lying on the floor, praising the officers' evidence as "credible
and reliable".

The officers suspended in January were: Inspectors Pollock, Frank Thom and
Ian McBain; Detective Sergeant Katrona Nicholson, Detective Constable James
Dinnen and PCs Andrew Caie and John Kelly.

No-one was available at the Crown Office last night. A spokesman for
Strathclyde Police declined to comment on the fresh concerns. He confirmed
that the seven officers remained suspended.