The Savoy's Red phosphorus
London is actually 620 Square miles and currently has 30,235 police officers employed in the Metropolitan so you would think it would be free of crime of most descriptions but by god its not. Is it because the police don't do their jobs right? No, the criminals just get smarter, day-by-day. London is seen by many as a good place to be, a busy and bustling city full of life and things to do which it is but not if you know about the other side of it, what goes on beneath the streets, behind closed doors, out of site and so secretly no one knows anything has happened. London is a busy and bustling place for all sorts of illegal activity. Firearms, Drugs, Information and whole variety of things get said, done or exchanged which never does anyone any good at all.
I am Detective Inspector Mike Harrow and my partner is Detective Inspector John Ardle and we have been assigned to a particularly charming area of crime, Drugs. I will tell you one thing; your life will be on the line every hour you work, people are protective of how they destroy their life, remarkably strange. I work evening shifts, naturally its when the drug business comes to life, everywhere you look, people standing on street corners with their arms crossed in front of them, hoods up, looking down at the floor and then every so often a passer by walks past and in a split second an exchange has been made, so quick and professional no one would notice. Drug Houses are hidden among the many other houses and somewhere behind some door; a factory is working 24/7 to supply. Profits roll in, in their thousands, and at twenty grand a kilo of most drugs, their hundreds of thousands. So profitable, so easy to do, it is indeed a businessman's dream except for the fact that it is indeed illegal. Naturally it sill goes on and its up to us to stop it, along with other officers.
It's a dreary night in November at around 11 pm, John and myself are on patrol in South Kensington, plain clothes, hoods up we just look like a couple of normal people walking the streets. Traffic rolls past us and the lights of buildings streak out across the road in the rain creating an almost beautiful street of light. It had been a busy week so far, lots of dealers and houses being found and lots of arrests being made, telling us drugs are on the increase which again relates to one thing, a new factory or some sort of masterful plan to obtain more drugs, bad news for us. We saw a man, stationary on the corner, about 75 metres up from the Albert Hall, there was no one on the street at all, except for the odd pedestrian or taxi going by, we approached him from behind and swept his feet from the floor with my boot, John was on top of him, pulling his hands behind his back while I searched him and I we guessed there were five little bags containing 5 or so white tablets each, that was one less of the streets. We radioed for transport and within 5 or so minutes he was on his way to the station, busted! The officer in the car told us it was the twelfth one tonight, they were appearing all over the place and along with them, three drug houses has been raided by police and shut down. The police as you can probably tell were getting annoyed and needed to clamp down on all this and really look into where all the drugs were coming from. The night went on and we encountered several more dealers and even one man was found high on crack in a back alley, it was a night of hard police work. The next day we were summoned to the Super's office, bricking it as if we has done something wrong, we entered the office. He informed us of the increasing problem that we reported in the first place and asked to get to the bottom of the factories, which involved doing some serious undercover work and also something we enjoyed, having the armed police as our support. Not having much choice in the matter, he ordered us to go down to the sewers near the long gone Aldwych Underground station.
London is actually 620 Square miles and currently has 30,235 police officers employed in the Metropolitan so you would think it would be free of crime of most descriptions but by god its not. Is it because the police don't do their jobs right? No, the criminals just get smarter, day-by-day. London is seen by many as a good place to be, a busy and bustling city full of life and things to do which it is but not if you know about the other side of it, what goes on beneath the streets, behind closed doors, out of site and so secretly no one knows anything has happened. London is a busy and bustling place for all sorts of illegal activity. Firearms, Drugs, Information and whole variety of things get said, done or exchanged which never does anyone any good at all.
I am Detective Inspector Mike Harrow and my partner is Detective Inspector John Ardle and we have been assigned to a particularly charming area of crime, Drugs. I will tell you one thing; your life will be on the line every hour you work, people are protective of how they destroy their life, remarkably strange. I work evening shifts, naturally its when the drug business comes to life, everywhere you look, people standing on street corners with their arms crossed in front of them, hoods up, looking down at the floor and then every so often a passer by walks past and in a split second an exchange has been made, so quick and professional no one would notice. Drug Houses are hidden among the many other houses and somewhere behind some door; a factory is working 24/7 to supply. Profits roll in, in their thousands, and at twenty grand a kilo of most drugs, their hundreds of thousands. So profitable, so easy to do, it is indeed a businessman's dream except for the fact that it is indeed illegal. Naturally it sill goes on and its up to us to stop it, along with other officers.
It's a dreary night in November at around 11 pm, John and myself are on patrol in South Kensington, plain clothes, hoods up we just look like a couple of normal people walking the streets. Traffic rolls past us and the lights of buildings streak out across the road in the rain creating an almost beautiful street of light. It had been a busy week so far, lots of dealers and houses being found and lots of arrests being made, telling us drugs are on the increase which again relates to one thing, a new factory or some sort of masterful plan to obtain more drugs, bad news for us. We saw a man, stationary on the corner, about 75 metres up from the Albert Hall, there was no one on the street at all, except for the odd pedestrian or taxi going by, we approached him from behind and swept his feet from the floor with my boot, John was on top of him, pulling his hands behind his back while I searched him and I we guessed there were five little bags containing 5 or so white tablets each, that was one less of the streets. We radioed for transport and within 5 or so minutes he was on his way to the station, busted! The officer in the car told us it was the twelfth one tonight, they were appearing all over the place and along with them, three drug houses has been raided by police and shut down. The police as you can probably tell were getting annoyed and needed to clamp down on all this and really look into where all the drugs were coming from. The night went on and we encountered several more dealers and even one man was found high on crack in a back alley, it was a night of hard police work. The next day we were summoned to the Super's office, bricking it as if we has done something wrong, we entered the office. He informed us of the increasing problem that we reported in the first place and asked to get to the bottom of the factories, which involved doing some serious undercover work and also something we enjoyed, having the armed police as our support. Not having much choice in the matter, he ordered us to go down to the sewers near the long gone Aldwych Underground station.
