I've been searching for a copy of "Untouchables: Dirty Cops, Bent Justice and Racism in Scotland Yard" at a reasonable price. It covers the past 10 years or so and is probably THE most meticulously researched and hard hitting expose of Metropolitan Police Force corruption ever written - so I'm told anyway. Oh dear! risky business - powerful peoples' interests jeopardised etc etc. It is out of print. A telephone call and dogged persistence about speaking to someone in authority at the Edinburgh publishers confirmed that there were no plans for a 2nd edition in spite of the fact that the best price I could find in the UK was approaching £100 per copy. The guy I spoke to did NOT want to talk about it.
Anyway, £100 being a bit outside my per-book budget, I thought I'd see if it was available from a local library. The usual searches revealed that it was only available in 4 locations outside the British Library UK-wide!
Guess which the nearest one to me was?
HM Prison, Sudbury library. Hey Ho.
Quote:Product Description
Untouchables is an integrity test on Scotland Yard. It is the result of a six-year investigation into how the most powerful police force in the United Kingdom claims to tackle corruption, racism and mismanagement within its own ranks. In 1993, the Yard set up a secret anti-corruption operation run by undercover cops whose existence was known to only a few senior officers. The Ghost Squad operated for five years ? spying, lying and concealing information ? with no independent oversight. In 1998, its shadowy detectives went public as the Untouchables ? their motto: ?Integrity is Non-Negotiable?. Commissioner Sir John Stevens promised they would bring bent and unethical colleagues to justice. But instead of thorough corruption investigations, there was corruption management. Instead of justice and accountability, there was cover-up. Based on official documents and over 1,000 interviews ? with criminals, supergrasses, police whistleblowers, former anti-corruption officers and judges, many of whom have never spoken out before, let alone on the record ? Untouchables is in the best tradition of hard-hitting expose journalism, naming names and packed with revelations. It tells the secret history surrounding the Jill Dando case and the key unsolved murders of Daniel Morgan, David Norris, Stephen Lawrence and Rachel Nickell. The authors also expose the buried history of the biggest armed robbery in British criminal history ? the 26 million Brinks Mat gold bullion heist, which is still dogging Scotland Yard on its 21st anniversary. Untouchables presents a timely and well-evidenced case for a fully independent system of policing the police.
About the Author
Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn were part of The Guardian?s investigative unit. They won Scoop of the Year at the 1999 Press Awards for exposing journalistic corruption in the fake ITV drugs documentary The Connection, which led to Carlton TV being fined £2m.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Untouchables-Dir...1903813042
Hmmm - the authors have very good investigative credentials.
If their facts were wrong, Britain's draconian libel laws would have been used to sue the authors into poverty and beyond.
Instead, it looks like TPTB ensured that the book had a limited print run and that our taxpayer-funded libraries don't stock any copies.
A highly effective means of suppressing the truth.
This book appears on a reading list for the National Policing Improvment Agency course titled Strategic Command Course 2008.
I wonder if it's so future plod leaders will learn how to avoid getting caught lol.
Here's the link:
www.npia.police.uk/en/docs/SCCReading_List.doc