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Scotland Yard adopt Wire tactics to crackdown on crooks’ money trail
Justin Davenport, Crime Editor21 Sep 2009
Scotland Yard is sending financial hit squads into boroughs in a new drive against crime.
Using tactics that mirror the hit TV police show The Wire, specialist cash investigators will trawl bank records and credit card spending in a bid to catch criminals.
The strategy was originally aimed at stripping the assets of major drug barons.
The borough squads will target a range of criminals including suspects in domestic violence cases and sex offenders as well as street-level drug dealers, robbers and burglars.
The financial investigation units, known as Operation Payback Teams, will use powers first issued under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA).
Det Supt Janice McClean said: “This is about using every financial technique we have to combat all kinds of crime types and to locate and trace people.
We want our local officers and detectives to think that this is just another tool in gathering evidence, in the same way as collecting DNA and fingerprints.”
This approach means if police do not have the evidence to prosecute criminals for serious crimes they pursue them for other offences, such as tax evasion.
A total of 400 detectives across the Met are trained in techniques to “follow the money” in criminal inquiries. Many are involved in specialist investigations into London's most serious gangsters but more than 180 are solely involved in financial inquiries in boroughs.
Police believe that targeting smaller street-level dealers can have an impact on leaders of drug crime.
Det Supt McClean said: “I believe that this can have a significant impact on organised crime because if you cut off the lifeblood at the bottom end of a crime group then you will disrupt the top end.
“If we take the assets of the street robbers and the street-level drug dealers who are committing burglaries then we will start to starve the handlers of their business and that will work its
way up the organisation. It also gives us the chance to humiliate gang members by stripping them of the symbols of their status.”
Det Supt McClean added: “One possibility is to target the suspects in domestic violence cases. For example, we can check for possible criminal
activity such as fraudulent mortgage applications.”
The powers are often used when police have insufficient evidence to mount a prosecution against known criminals.
Using the POCA, police can seize cash and goods on suspicion that it is the proceeds of crime. Suspects have to prove it is the product of legitimate enterprise.
Ghulam Azizi, 25, of Tooting, was convicted of money laundering at Kingston crown court in June after he was caught with £100,000 in cash in his
car. Financial investigators from Wandsworth helped find that the cash came from the sale of heroin.
Azizi had channelled £1.3 million through the British banking system and officers suspect this was intended for drugs producers in the Middle East. He was jailed for four and a half years and had to forfeit £100,000 plus his car.
Last year the Met seized £21 million from 4,787 criminals — a major increase on 2002 when police seized £1.5 million from 239 criminals.
The tactics mirror those deployed by The Wire's Detective Lester Freamon, who follows the “money trail” to crack Baltimore drug gangs.
Reader views (4)
To a degree, I agree with this, but are we becoming a society where we have to prove we are innocent, instead of the police state to prove our guilt?
- David, Abbey Wood SE2, 22/09/2009 03:46
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so all the mps will be wired then and the lords
- Rsaviour, lonodn england, 21/09/2009 11:32
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Instead of chasing a few smack-heads for chump change, why don't the Police investigate the 'honourable members' who've well and truly fleeced the entire country?
- Threaded, Roskilde, Denmark, 21/09/2009 11:11
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If these people actually watched The Wire they'd know that the head of the criminal gang got away with all the money at the end. Oops.
Wouldn't they be better adopting the Miss Marple approach? She always gets the guilty party bang to rights.
- Nolan, Londonist, 21/09/2009 10:22
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