NEWS “with out comment”
Bent Coppers: Crossing the Line of Duty
Series 1 – Episode 1 of 3
Part One of the Three Part Documentary aired Wednesday evening entitled “Firm in a Firm”
This series explores the dirty secrets behind London’s policing with a story of corruption that goes to the very top of the Met and leads to the formation of the first internal anti-corruption unit, A10, which inspired the BBC drama Line of Duty.
The first episode begins in 1969, at a time when the British police are held to be the most trusted and effective force in the world. But all that is about to change.
When a desperate south London villain tips off The Times about how he is being extorted for money by a detective in the Metropolitan Police, something much more shocking is discovered:
that at the heart of the Metropolitan CID there exists a ‘firm in a firm’, a secret network of corrupt coppers.
With insider interviews, evocative archive footage and secret recordings, the documentary reveals the story behind The Times’s investigation and shows how the public myth of incorruptibility protected the police for so long.
Part 2 will feature the crisis the Met found themselves in when their highest ranking CID Officer was exposed with London’s prolific Pornographer on holiday together.
A most illuminating documentary, well worth watching, and a reminder of the “Good” or was it really the “Bad” old days………
The Comment:
Interestingly, in my recently published Memoirs “Private Eye, Secret Spy” – Chapter 10 spells out my own inter-action with this very case!! (See: https://wapi.org/members-publications/)
Posted by Ian (D. Withers)