by Neil Woods
So one night I sat up all night alone in our HQ, trying to figure out a new way.
The next day I presented my ideas to the team.
‘OK look. The gangsters in this city have figured out our tactics and they’ve taken countermeasures. We’re never going to get anywhere near them by coming up from the gutter. They’ve got their system sewn up, and the population completely terrorised.’
I was met with a wall of blank stares.
‘So let’s try a new tactic. Let me rent a van, and fill it with seized goods from customs. Furniture, computers, TVs – stuff like that. I’ll drive into town and reinvent myself as a medium-level house burglar from Manchester, looking for proper connections down south. I reckon it will take me three months to work my way into the scene, at which point I can legitimately try and buy a weight of cocaine and we can make some meaningful arrests.’
‘Three months?’ cried the DI. ‘What do you think this is, a bloody ocean cruise?’ I heard the obligatory round of mocking sniggers ripple through the room.
‘No. What I think this is is a poorly thought out, shitshow of an operation – and it needs someone with actual experience on the street to sort it out.’
This was getting resolved right here, right now. The DI leapt to his feet, his voice rising in fury. ‘What – and your solution is to fuck about for three months in a van? You’re meant to do as you’re told and buy bloody drugs, mate!’
‘No’, I replied coolly, ‘the idea of the van is a stopgap. Because you’ve overused undercover tactics so much by now they’re basically useless. After we pull the van stunt, the gangsters will have worked that out too – it’s just a last throw of the dice to save this operation.’
I paused before continuing, enjoying the looks of gawping astonishment from the team.
‘The real solution here would be to re-examine those fifty-four heroin deaths you had last year.’
The DI slammed his hand down on the table. ‘Do you really expect us to take fifty-four accidental deaths, and stick them back on our books as unsolved murders? For a bunch of fucking smackheads?’
Then one of the younger members of the team piped-up, ‘Yeah, a dead junkie’s a dead junkie, innit. One less to bloody worry about.’ This provoked a round of approving mutters across the room.
For me, this was beyond the pale. I knew the junkies that little brat was talking about. I lived with them. I scored dope with them. I had seen the deprivation in which they lived. No cop should ever talk like that about the people he is meant to be protecting. Looking around the circle of smug grinning faces, I also realised that not one of the addicts I knew, no matter how much they resented getting busted, would ever have said anything so abysmally callous about the officers sitting in this room.
But in that moment I had other worries. I had challenged the DI and now he needed to show the wolf pack he was still the boss. He stepped out from behind his desk and squared up.
‘You know what your problem is?’ I saw his face twist and his breathing grow heavy. ‘You’re just fucking scared. You’re a coward, and you’re too scared to do your bloody job – so you just try to faff about with vans and reopen old cases.’
This was too much. I felt myself go icy cold. After the things I had done, he was calling me a coward?
The room hushed as I stepped forward. I saw his eyes flicker as if even he knew he’d gone too far.
I saw his chubby little face floating in front of me. The DI had been sitting at a desk for too long – I’d been out on the street. I knew I could drop him with a single punch. Right in the throat. I felt a white-hot spike of rage shoot up my spine. For a split-second I was no longer Neil – I was Zack, Cookie, Woody, Danny – every codename I’d ever used to become a desperate, ravening street addict who would stick a knife in your belly for a twenty-quid bag of gear.
Then I came back.
I stepped forward, dropping my voice to a low, purposeful hiss. ‘Don’t you ever call me a coward. You haven’t done the things I’ve done. You couldn’t do the things I do – you’d fall apart in thirty seconds. I’m a hundred times the cop you are – and secretly – you fucking know it too.’
I turned and slowly, deliberately, walked out of the room.
I had no idea where I was walking, but I knew I wasn’t going back to that office. Whatever it this team were doing, it wasn’t police work as I understood it.
Inevitably, it being Brighton, I ended up at the seafront, watching the waves crash on the rocks. Not sure if I was acting as the Neil the cop or Woody the addict, I ducked into a corner shop and bought myself five cans of strong lager and a pack of cigarettes. It’s the only relapse into smoking I’ve ever had. Then I found a bench on the promenade and sat down to think things out.
I was a mess – a million thoughts flashing at a thousand miles an hour, and none with any clarity or coherence. Of course I was angry. But the DI and his crew were just a bunch of incompetent pricks, and I’d dealt with incompetent pricks before. Of course I was disappointed – but by now I should have been used to the idea that sometimes operations just failed. This was something else, something much deeper.
I sat there on that bench wrestling for a grip on the feelings raging inside me. I sucked down my beers and smoked like a forest fire. My fists clenched and unclenched compulsively, my heart shuddering in my chest like a freight train.
What was it? What was I looking for? Why did I feel these electric currents of panic shooting through my mind and body?
Then, staring out at where the black sea met the grey sky, from one moment to the next, I realised exactly what was going on.
There was no mystery here. There were no unanswered questions. Not only did I know exactly what was troubling me, but really, I’d known for a long time. I just hadn’t been able to admit it to myself.
The War on Drugs was wrong. This battle, which I had been fighting for so long, which I had poured so much of my life into, was a massive, glaring, futile, stupid failure. It wasn’t the tactics. It wasn’t the strategies. It wasn’t the momentary lapses and inevitable mistakes. It was the War itself.
This was a truth that I had seen long ago, but been afraid to truly accept. The internal contradictions had been tearing me up inside, and now I felt a wave of peace wash over me – I could just let them go.
If I was honest, it all went back to that one night during the Leicester job, sitting on my sofa watching Cold War documentaries and realising the inevitability of the drugs war arms race. The truth had been right there; I just hadn’t yet had the courage to face it.
Undercover work is the most aggressive, intrusive and potentially damaging tactic in the police arsenal. In the street-level War on Drugs, it’s the nuclear option. Well, we had gone nuclear, and the gangsters had not only worked out how to deflect the weapon – they had redirected its explosive power onto the very people we were meant to be protecting.
Each job had got tougher, each story I encountered more brutal and horrifying. I had fooled myself into believing that the arms race was just a regrettable by-product of our tactics and strategies. I now realised it was written into the script. There was never any potential for de-escalation – never any possibility it could go any other way.
It is an incredibly difficult, but strangely liberating, moment when you realise the battle you have devoted your entire professional life to has done more harm than good.
I could now cast a cold eye, and see how the people who had suffered most through my operations weren’t the gangsters I hated, but the civilians and addicts I was trying to protect. By fighting this war, it was us who had placed innocent people in the firing line. We hadn’t meant to, but it was the inevitable result of our actions. The road to hell is always paved with good intentions – but there does come a point when you can stop and think about the direction you’re travelling.
Don’t get me wrong. I had seen the havoc that drugs could wreak, and I still wanted to destroy the pushers and gangsters who ran the trade. I simpl
y now understood that law enforcement wasn’t the tool to fix this problem. We had tried, and we had failed. We were always going to fail. Now it was time to try something else.
And, in that instant, the sense of hopelessness left me. I knew what I had to do.
I was still a cop. I was a detective with multiple commendations and an expertise in the narcotics trade that was unique in the force. I still wanted to fight the good fight – that wasn’t ever a question. I just wasn’t going to waste my time chasing homeless addicts – I was going to change the system.
I would go back to my detective work and keep fighting gangsters and murderers. I would build my reputation and expertise, advance through the force and influence policy from the inside – away from the narrow mentality of the War on Drugs, towards a solution that might actually work.
It would be a long hard road, but I had never shied away from a challenge. In fact, it’s what I lived for. To me, this was just my next operation.
The job I had always wanted in the police force was Detective Sergeant, running a team of detectives, structuring complex, intelligence-led investigations. With my experience I knew I could achieve this. Jim Horner advised Chief Constables on drugs. If I got the same profile maybe I could do the same, allowing me to influence policy.
All I have ever needed in life is a mission. Now I had one. With this new sense of purpose, I felt the war that had been raging inside me begin to subside. It was only then that I realised just how long I’d been harbouring this inner conflict without even knowing it. I felt lighter and happier than I had in years. It seems the truth will set you free after all.
I flicked the cigarette I was smoking out onto the stony beach and gave the greying horizon one last glance. This mission was over.
I didn’t even stop by Brighton HQ to pick up my stuff.
CHAPTER 15
BUXTON II
I CAME SO close to making it work.
I moved back up to Buxton and threw myself into my work with renewed vigour, eventually making it to Detective Sergeant, the job I had always aspired to on the force. I was engaging with the aspects of police work I truly believed in: directing complex, structured investigations into powerful organised crime groups.
At the same time I was educating myself. I spent every spare moment turning myself into an expert on the roots, function and implications of drug enforcement policy, both in the UK and across the world. I had to be absolutely sure that my ideas on the drugs war were not just an emotional reaction to my own experiences. I was a cop – I needed evidence.
And the evidence blew my mind. I became a statistics machine, reeling off numbers, facts, analysis. I pored over the data, weighing and dissecting each conflicting viewpoint like any sceptical detective should. The conclusion I came to was indisputable. My epiphany on the Brighton beachfront had been correct – the War on Drugs was a harmful, counterproductive misadventure. The catastrophic failure had always been a foregone conclusion.
The illicit durgs trade in the UK alone is worth roughly £7 billion a year. To put that in perspective, total annual spend on unemployment benefits is around £4.9 billion.
That is seven billion pounds transferred straight into the pockets of the gangsters I had spent my life chasing down. It is the financial base on which all other forms of organised criminality rests. Even worse, the costs of policing drugs are an additional £7 billion per year – £7 billion taken straight out of investigations into murders, rapes, robberies and other violent crime.
I knew this message might be unpopular among certain sections of the police hierarchy, so I took things step by step, making sure my credentials were absolutely in order.
Jim Horner had been appointed to the influential Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), as a specialist drugs policy advisor. I knew by this stage I actually had more specialist knowledge than he did; and if I played my cards right I could eventually make it there too, giving myself the chance to make a real impact on policy.
My first move was to become an accredited Drugs Expert Witness. I began travelling the country providing expert testimony at trials, attending seminars, getting myself onto committees and making contacts in the field.
Eventually I found myself giving presentations to three hundred specialist drug officers at the National Conference, teaching them about the implications of R v. Moon, a stated case in European law mandating that police forces must take into consideration when an addict has been selling in order to fund their own habit. Obviously I cared deeply about this; I had seen the difference between user-dealers and real gangsters consistently ignored in pursuit of stats.
By the end of that conference I had been appointed to the board of the Drugs Expert and Witness Valuation Association (DEWVA). The head of DEWVA also served on the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), and had direct access to politicians. I was making progress.
At the same time, I ran a tight team as a DS, bringing in a steady stream of convictions against serious OCGs. Rookie detectives I tutored routinely came back with the highest detection rates in the county. This is the type of stuff that establishes a reputation in police circles.
But as much as I had personally vowed to take no further part in the drugs war, that was always just a fantasy. The narcotics trade permeates every level of organised criminality. There is more money in drugs than every other criminal enterprise combined. In fact, now there is virtually no organised criminal activity that isn’t in some way drug-related. We would scratch the surface of a murder and almost invariably find a turf war between dealers, or a gang protecting their supply network. In policing organised crime, all roads lead to dope.
At this point in my career, things had also settled down at home. Sam had changed jobs and was working long hours, which suited me as I had the house to myself most evenings and I could get on with taking care of the kids. They were growing into wonderful, intelligent children who I loved spending time with. For a few years I had the quiet, focused life I needed.
Then the nightmares started.
It was a sword at my throat. It was a glowering face forcing me to take amphetamine. It was a woman clutching a can of Special Brew, walking down the street shouting ‘Sex for sale’.
I would wake up screaming, soaked in sweat, with the kids at the door asking what was wrong. But I couldn’t sleep. Sleep was where they were.
I would zombie my way through work the next day, my mind fixating on the moment that night when I would have to close my eyes again. Eventually the horrors began creeping into my waking life. The tiniest throwaway remark could trigger my heart rate – suddenly I would be back in Northampton, forced to strip at gunpoint. I’d have to excuse myself and lock myself in the toilet until my breathing returned to normal.
And just as I was struggling to deal with this growing mental instability, my relationship with Sam once again began to spiral into chaos. For years I had been using undercover work as an escape from the situation at home – literally the chance to become somebody else for a few hours. Now, without that release valve – and terrified even of sleep – I medicated in the only way I knew how. Once again, three cans of lager at night became five. But I always paid the price for this momentary relief in hungover paranoia and self-doubt the following day.
My work began slipping. It began slowly: a lost file here, an un-followed piece of evidence there – nothing that would raise eyebrows from the bosses. But I always knew when a day’s work didn’t come up to my own standards. By now I was a survivor, able to get by under stress and paper over the cracks to fool the world. But I couldn’t fool myself.
And just as my night terrors were spinning out of control, and our home life was nearing the point of collapse, I began work on what would be my last major case on the force – a case that would give me one final chilling illustration of the corrosive effects of the War on Drugs.
The target was Kenny McMinn, a lieutenant of the infamous Manchester gangster Arran Coghlan. Coghlan was called the ‘Teflon Don�
��, as it was widely known he had got away with murder three times after witnesses refused to testify, or cases collapsed in dubious circumstances. The investigation into McMinn was part of an ongoing campaign against Coghlan’s criminal empire.
When we sat down for our initial briefing, the very first order our DI gave was that under no circumstances were we to speak to anyone from Greater Manchester police. In fact, if anyone from the Manchester force contacted us, or even mentioned the case in any way, we were to immediately inform our commanders.
The younger detectives in the room didn’t understand. Surely, they asked, sharing intelligence between departments could only be a good thing? The more experienced investigators got it immediately. Manchester police leaked like a sieve. We had to assume that the gangsters had moles throughout that force, and any information we passed on would go straight to our targets. Just as with my previous experience of criminal infiltration in Nottingham, the fatalistic response was simply, ‘Well, with this much money involved, how can corruption not happen?’
No one seemed to be drawing the blindingly obvious conclusion – why not take the narcotics trade out of the gangsters’ hands, and actually deprive them of all that money? But this briefing didn’t seem to be the ideal moment for me to suggest the legalisation and regulation of the entire drugs trade.
We worked the case hard, fighting our way through the standard drugs-war brutality and violence, and keeping our information flow as tight as possible to prevent leaks. Eventually I managed to flip one of McMinn’s own user-dealers, offering him rehab and the chance of a new life in witness protection on the other side of the country.
As we were awaiting trial on the McMinn case, I was called to attend a crime scene in Hayfield, a posh town on the Cheshire–Derbyshire border. It seemed this site was connected to Arran Coghlan’s drug empire, and may have some bearing on our investigation.
As I pulled up, I saw a large team from Greater Manchester police working the crime scene for forensics. My hackles went up immediately. Remembering our instructions regarding the Manchester force, I leapt out of my car, demanding to see the supervising DS.
