The Great Train Robbery was the robbery of £2.61 million from a Royal Mail train travelling from Glasgow to London on the West Coast Main Line in the early hours of 8 August 1963 at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England.
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police, is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and crime prevention within Greater London. In addition, it is responsible for specialised tasks throughout the United Kingdom, such as dealing with counter-terrorism throughout the UK, and the protection of certain individuals, including the monarch, royal family, governmental officials, and other designated figures. Commonly referred to as the Met, it is also referred to as Scotland Yard or the Yard, after the location of its original headquarters in Great Scotland Yard, Whitehall in the 19th century. The Met is presently headquartered at New Scotland Yard, on the Victoria Embankment.
The Sweeney is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London. It stars John Thaw as Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as his partner, Detective Sergeant George Carter. It was produced by the Thames Television subsidiary Euston Films for broadcast on the ITV network in the UK between 2 January 1975 and 28 December 1978.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is the branch of a police force to which most plainclothes detectives belong in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth nations. A force's CID is distinct from its Special Branch. The name derives from the CID of the Metropolitan Police, formed on 8 April 1878 by C. E. Howard Vincent as a re-formation of its Detective Branch. British colonial police forces all over the world adopted the terminology developed in the UK in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and later the police forces of those countries often retained it after independence. English-language media often use "CID" as a translation to refer to comparable organisations in other countries.
The Brink's-Mat robbery was one of the largest robberies in British history, with £26 million worth of gold bullion, diamonds, and cash stolen. It occurred at the Heathrow International Trading Estate, London, on 26 November 1983, from a warehouse operated by Brink's-Mat, a former joint venture between US security company Brink's and London-based company MAT Transport. The bullion was the property of Johnson Matthey Bankers Ltd. Micky McAvoy and Brian Robinson were convicted of armed robbery. Most of the gold has never been recovered. Lloyd's of London paid out for the losses, and several shooting deaths have been linked to the case.
The Specialist Firearms Command (MO19) is the firearms unit of the Metropolitan Police Service. Formed in 2005, the Command is responsible for providing a firearms-response capability, assisting the rest of the service, which is not routinely armed.
Stephen Waldorf was shot and seriously injured by police officers in London on 14 January 1983 after they mistook him for David Martin, an escaped criminal. The shooting caused a public outcry and led to a series of reforms to the training and authorisation of armed police officers in the United Kingdom. Martin was a thief and fraudster who was known to carry firearms and had previously shot a police officer. He escaped from custody in December 1982, and the police placed his girlfriend under surveillance. On the day of the shooting, they followed her as she travelled in a car whose front-seat passenger (Waldorf) resembled Martin. When the car stopped in traffic, Detective Constable Finch—the only officer present who had met Martin—was sent forward on foot to confirm the passenger's identity.
Jack Kenneth Slipper was a Detective Chief Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police in London. He was known as "Slipper of the Yard". He was mainly known for his role in investigating the Great Train Robbery of 1963, and in tracking down Ronnie Biggs after he escaped from prison in 1965, although he had to leave Brazil without Biggs.
Operation Countryman was an investigation into police corruption in London in the late 1970s. The operation was conducted between 1978 and 1982 at a total cost of £3 million and led to eight police officers being prosecuted, although none were convicted. The initial allegations of corruption were made by a supergrass who claimed that some officers, including members of the elite Flying Squad which dealt with commercial armed robberies, were receiving bribes from criminals in return for warnings of imminent police raids or arrests, the fabrication of evidence against innocent men, and having charges against guilty criminals dropped.
Derek Creighton "Bertie" Smalls was considered by many as Britain's first supergrass. Although there have been informers throughout history – the Kray twins were partly convicted two years before Smalls on evidence given by Leslie Payne – the Smalls case was significant for three reasons: the first informer to give the police volume names of his associates and provide the evidence that would send dozens of them to prison to serve long sentences; the first criminal informer to strike a written deal with the Director of Public Prosecutions; the only criminal informer to serve no time for his crime in return for providing Queen's evidence.
Sweeney 2 is a 1978 British action crime drama film directed by Tom Clegg and starring John Thaw and Dennis Waterman. It was a sequel to the 1977 film Sweeney!. Both films are an extension of the British ITV television series The Sweeney (1975–1978). Some of the action in the film is transferred from the usual London setting to Malta.
The Serious and Organised Crime Command was a unit of the Metropolitan Police in Greater London, United Kingdom. It was part of the Specialist Crime Directorate and is today part of Met Operations 7 (MO7). It was divided into 10 units:
The Armed Offenders Squad was a unit of Victoria Police in Australia tasked with investigating non-fatal violent crimes. Subject to frequent complaints of police brutality, the squad was disbanded in 2006 following an investigation by the Victorian Office of Police Integrity.
The Millennium Dome raid was an attempted robbery of the Millennium Dome's diamond exhibition in Greenwich, South East London occurring on 7 November 2000. A local gang planned to ram-raid the De Beers diamond exhibition, which was held in the riverside Dome. The gang had then planned to escape via the Thames in a speedboat.
Thomas Marius Joseph Butler was a Detective Chief Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police in London. He was most notable for leading the team of detectives that investigated the Great Train Robbery in 1963. He never married and lived with his mother. Butler was arguably the most renowned head of the Flying Squad in its history. He became known as "One Day" Tommy for the speed with which he apprehended criminals and the "Grey Fox" for his shrewdness.
The Sweeney is a 2012 British action drama film, inspired by the 1970s The Sweeney, the British television police drama of the same name, but set in contemporary London. Written and directed by Nick Love, from a story by Love and John Hodge, it is based on the characters created by Ian Kennedy Martin. It stars Ray Winstone as Jack Regan, Plan B as George Carter, and Damian Lewis as Frank Haskins, with Allen Leech and Hayley Atwell.
Flying Squad was a documentary television series broadcast in 1989 on the British ITV network. Flying Squad was a joint production between Argo Productions and Thames Television. The series followed the elite unit, known as The Flying Squad. The unit is a branch of the Specialist Crime & Operations section, within London's Metropolitan Police Service.
James William Humphreys was an English businessman and criminal who owned a chain of adult book shops and strip clubs in London in the 1960s and 1970s. He was able to run his business through the payment of large bribes to serving police officers, particularly those from the Obscene Publications Branch (OPB) of the Metropolitan Police. His diaries—which detailed meetings he had held with police officers, the venues of the meetings and the amounts of bribes paid—provided evidence for the investigation by anti-corruption officers of the Metropolitan Police.
Alexander Anthony Eist BEM was a detective at Scotland Yard during the 1960s and 1970s. He is particularly notable for the many allegations of corruption made against him. These included complicity in jewel robberies and providing false alibis to criminals. He later provided testimony to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations regarding the assassination of Martin Luther King, whose killer—James Earl Ray—had been in his custody following Ray's escape to London in 1968.
The Chandler's Ford shooting was the shooting of armed robbers in the town of Chandler's Ford, Hampshire, in southern England, on 13 September 2007. Two men were shot dead by Metropolitan Police officers while they were robbing a cash-in-transit van at gunpoint. The Metropolitan Police's Flying Squad had been tracking a gang of armed robbers from South London who were estimated to have stolen £500,000 from 18 robberies of security vans. The Flying Squad received intelligence that the gang intended to target the HSBC branch in Chandler's Ford and planned to lie in wait and apprehend the suspects as they attempted the robbery.
