Elite police squad are jailed for drug deals

One of Britain's biggest police corruption cases came to a close yesterday with the conviction of members of an élite police squad. The detectives, at the forefront of the fight against drugs, were convicted of selling narcotics they had seized in the course of their duties.

One of Britain's biggest police corruption cases came to a close yesterday with the conviction of members of an élite police squad. The detectives, at the forefront of the fight against drugs, were convicted of selling narcotics they had seized in the course of their duties.

Thomas Kingston, 42, and Thomas Reynolds, 39, who were detectice constables with Nine South-East Regional Crime Squad (Sercs) based at East Dulwich, south London, were jailed for three-and-a-half years at the Old Bailey in London yesterday for conspiracy to supply a class B drug.

A sergeant on the same squad, Terance O'Connell, 43, was jailed for two years for committing acts tending or intending to pervert the course of justice. He had known what the others were doing and falsified a report, the court was told. He was earlier acquitted of conspiracy on order of the judge.

The three are the last members of the Sercs to come before the courts accused of corruption. Their ringleader, Robert Clark, was jailed for 12 years at the Old Bailey in February. His "enthusiastic" lieutenant, Christopher Drury, was jailed for 11 years. Their sentences were revealed for the first time yesterday because of pending proceedings.

The scale of corruption in the squad in the mid-Nineties was only exposed after a drugs baroness, Evelyn Fleckney, 44, turned supergrass and provided the Police Complaints Investigation Bureau with details of her dealings with Clark. Fleckney had fallen under Clark's spell in early in the decade when she was arrested and turned informer. The two became lovers and she began to sell drugs that he and his colleagues had seized.

However, when she was jailed for 15 years in 1998 for a separate drugs offence, she decided to tell police about her relationship with Clark and the Sercs which spanned half a decade. During the trial she admitted that she had loved Clark.

It was with tips from Fleckney that Clark put himself above and outside the law. He appeared not to have been kept in check by his superior officers, a point the judge singled out for criticism at his trial.

Orlando Pownall, for the prosecution, told the court: "There was no supervision, and through the lack of supervision there grew a sense of arrogance, a feeling that [the Sercs members] were untouchable."

Clark, who lead the team which styled themselves "the groovy gang", told the court for his defence: "If you were producing the work, the team did not need supervision. The Regional Crime Squad was very professional, very renowned and were expected to produce quality results. You would not sit in the office - you would go out looking for work."

As the investigation got under way, another Sercs officer "wrestled with his conscience" and decided to tell all he knew of the corruption which penetrated the squad.

The evidence from Detective Constable Neil Putnam became the main prosecution plank in the trials of his colleagues. Putnam was jailed for three years and eleven months and Fleckney for four and a half years in February for their parts in drug dealing. Putnam, a devout Christian, is now free. Fleckney's sentence was to run concurrently with her 15-year term. Mr Justice Blofeld said at the time that if police turned to crime, "the whole fabric of society was affected".

The judge said: "If an élite squad - which Sercs at Dulwich was - there to try and catch the most sophisticated criminals who sadly abound in society turn to crime, their whole efforts are aborted and society suffers." He criticised the lack of supervision by senior officers which had allowed the detectives to put themselves above the law. "There is little indication they were themselves effectively supervised either," he said.