The West Midlands Serious Crime Squad was a police unit in the English West Midlands which operated from 1974 to 1989. It was disbanded after an investigation into allegations of incompetence and abuse of power on the part of some of the squad's members. Some of this misconduct resulted in wrongful convictions, including the high-profile case of the Birmingham Six. The sister Regional Crime Squad, based in Bilston, was responsible for the investigation of the Bridgewater Four.
At least 40 convictions failed in the 1980s as a result of probable malpractice, including tampering with evidence. As cases began to regularly collapse in the late 1980s, pressure mounted to investigate the squad; Clare Short raised the issue in Parliament in January 1989. The Birmingham Six convictions were overturned in 1991. A series of other, lower-profile convictions based on the squad's investigations were overturned on appeal, including the cases of George Glen Lewis, Keith Twitchell and (on 17 October 2014) Martin Foran, who had been wrongly convicted in 1978 of four counts of robbery. By January 2017, 60 appellants had had their convictions overturned. Over 100 cases collapsed or were overturned on appeal.
The squad was shut down by Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear in August 1989, and the West Yorkshire Police was asked by the Police Complaints Authority to investigate the squad's activities since 1986. The Birmingham Six and Bridgewater Four cases were out of scope, although there was staff crossover with the regional squad. The West Yorkshire Police published a 1994 report leading to disciplinary action against seven officers, but recommended against prosecution for lack of evidence. Ten officers avoided disciplinary action by resigning or retiring early, and around 100 received advice about police procedures. Director of Public Prosecutions Barbara Mills agreed with the report and did not attempt to prosecute any officers, for which she was widely criticised.
History Formation of the squad
The Serious Crime Squad (SCS) was formed in 1974 when the West Midlands Police was created by the Local Government Act 1972, merging Birmingham City Police with parts of a number of other forces covering the West Midlands region. The squad's roots go back to 1952, when a Special Crime Squad was formed on an experimental basis. It successfully dealt with a number of metal thieves, a crime that had increased due to the growth of scrap-metal collection from bomb sites in the postwar era. A second Regional Crime Squad was formed with officers from neighbouring counties to deal with crimes outside Birmingham. In 1960, when it was known as the Birmingham Crime Squad, it detected over 1,060 crimes and made 579 arrests. Annual reports emphasise that the seriousness of the crimes, rather than their quantity, was the key factor in its performance.
Early work The squad dealt with the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, bringing its work to national attention. It continued to deal with anti-terrorist investigations until 1979, when a separate squad was formed. The SCS reoriented its work, primarily towards armed robberies. That year, the SCS moved to shared offices with other West Midlands police units in Lloyd House.
In 1979–80, the SCS investigated a spate of armed robberies known as the Thursday Robberies; the gang was known as the Thursday Gang by police. The SCS and Robbery Squads worked together to catch the criminals responsible in Operation Cat. According to the 1991 Independent Report of the SCS, "[M]any Midlands solicitors we have spoken to believe [this operation] gave the green light to some officers ... to indulge in serious malpractice". Arrests included Ronald, Donald, and John Brown, whose convictions were later overturned. After the murder of a security guard in 1980, the SCS arrested John Irvine and Keith Twitchell for armed robbery; their convictions were also overturned.
1980s and declining performance By 1982, the number of arrests by SCS had declined to under 200; they remained approximately this low through the decade, despite a steady increase in reported crime and arrests in the West Midlands. As a percentage of arrests made by West Midlands Police as a whole, their work was declining. Many of the arrests were for less-serious crimes, with burglary and theft accounting for around half of the arrests. Explanations included that criminals were becoming more sophisticated and less "amenable" to confessing. The West Midlands Police explained in 1988, "Investigations are more protracted, and masks, disguises, false number plates and other means of evading capture are frequently used",West Midlands Police Annual Report, 1988, quoted in techniques which are not unusual by hardened criminals committing serious crimes. According to Tim Kaye, police management knew that the excuses were thin and the squad was underperforming throughout the 1980s.
In 1984, the squad began to rely heavily on supergrass evidence. These informants later proved unreliable, but led to a number of high-profile arrests. By the mid-1980s, colleagues "resented the 'support of the squad and avoided collaboration and referrals; this further reduced the squad's ability to pursue serious crime.
The district auditor strongly criticised the organisation's poor management in 1985 and 1989. West Midlands Police said that the SCS was being reorganised in 1988, with changes to recruitment practices, shortly before it was closed down.
The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 should have changed many practices at the SCS (such as introducing the recording of interviews), and was noted as implemented in the 1986 annual report. Subsequent evidence indicated that its provisions were being widely ignored or evaded.
Rising concerns Throughout the 1980s, there were concerns about the Birmingham Six convictions. Chris Mullin campaigned as an MP to see the convictions reviewed. Concerns about the Bridgewater Four, who had been investigated by the sister No. 4 Regional Crime Squad, were investigated by Paul Foot.
A number of cases had been overturned in the 1980s, and several members of the squad were seen as unreliable witnesses., summarised in Concerns were given particular credence due to a new forensic technique using an Electrostatic Detection Apparatus (ESDA). The technique allowed forensic experts to trace impressions made on sheets of paper underneath the original, often showing when words or lines had been added to original statements. The first case using this evidence was that of Paul Dandy in 1987.
In January 1989, Birmingham Ladywood MP Clare Short raised in Parliament the problems that Birmingham solicitors had encountered when trying to file complaints concerning the squad about their clients' cases. Short detailed the apparently-widespread squad practice of doctoring statements by adding additional incriminating pages, which was leading to convictions being challenged. Nevertheless, systemic squad issues such as an apparent culture of taking shortcuts and abusing procedure to perform well enough to qualify for promotion were not being addressed.
Disbandment and investigation In August 1989, the squad was disbanded by Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear and a number of its senior officers were assigned to desk duty. That month, a West Yorkshire Police investigation by led by Assistant Chief Constable Donald Shaw was asked to examine allegations of misconduct by the squad. Its remit was limited to complaints made after the start of 1986, "when complaints about the squad started to emerge". The question of the Birmingham pub bombings convictions was raised at the time, but was considered by the government to be out of scope and unnecessary. A number of former SCS officers who had been placed on desk duty were returned to investigatory roles in 1990, after Dear left for another post and was replaced by Ronald Hadfield.
Inquiries and decision not to prosecute officers The Civil Liberties Trust funded Birmingham University legal academic Tim Kaye to lead an independent inquiry, backed by an advisory panel which included Clare Short and Bishop of Birmingham Mark Santer. It reported in 1991, three years before the official inquiry, and presented evidence of systemic malpractice and patterns of fabrication of evidence and other procedural abuses by specific officers.
The PCA report, published in 1994, concluded that there had been "physical abuse of prisoners, fabrication of admissions, planting of evidence and mishandling of informants". Seven officers faced disciplinary action as a result of the report, for 28 complaints. One officer faced a complaint about tampering with a statement, and the other six were suspected of irregularities related to payments to informers. Ten more officers would have faced 20 complaints, but had resigned or retired. Another 102 officers were given informal advice about their failure to adhere to police procedure. The disciplinary procedures were conducted as an internal matter, and the report recommended that no officers should face criminal charges.
Director of Public Prosecutions Barbara Mills agreed that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute any officer at the squad, a decision for which she was widely criticised., No officers were prosecuted for their roles in corrupt investigations but former West Midlands Serious Crime Squad detective Laurence Henry Shaw was later convicted of attempted robbery in Solihull in 2001, and in 2010 for armed robbery in Lostwithiel, Cornwall.
Issues and malpractice The SCS had a number of issues ranging from poor recruitment and management practices to well-documented, repeated falsification. Poor management led to poor performance, which pressured officers to take shortcuts.
Management issues The SCS had an "elite" ethos which may have induced arrogance in dealing with other investigators. Recruitment was usually through choice, rather than open recruitment. The SCS was an all-male, probably wholly-white unit; officers tended to serve for long periods rather than move regularly, and were allowed to work long overtime hours. These factors may have reinforced an insular culture. Incidents were recorded of bullying officers who reported malpractice.
The general West Midlands interview manual was criticised as misleading, advising officers to assume guilt in a range of situations where it may not be true. The manual appeared to be a compendium of techniques and experience from officers, rather than based on independent psychological research and evidence. Reactions to interviews are made under stress and need to be treated with caution, but the manual offered interpretations of various reactions as likely signs of guilt. The advice included contradictory interpretations of similar reactionsfor instance, insisting on innocence and complaining about treatment was noted in different parts of the manual as indicating innocence or guilt. The Guardian concluded that West Midlands Police should "adopt the approach of [the] Mersey scheme, with its emphasis on teaching the police to listen and frame questions. Research shows the biggest mistake in interrogation is the failure to listen to what is said".
There was a lax approach to the pairing of officers for interviews; officers less familiar with each other should be put together to reduce the risk of poor (or illegal) practice. A number of regular pairings of interviewing officers seems to have led to collaboration in falsifying evidence.
It was West Midlands Police policy to transfer the vast majority of documents to microfiche after two years and destroy the originals; the microfiche copies, however, were often unreadable. The practice made it impossible to ascertain if statements had been interfered with through ESDA scanning and analysis.