by Andrew Green
[article published in The Law]
16.40 MW red T shirt jeans on foot from Princess Fiddler crosses on foot side of McFresh transact for Bank notes shake down x 1...
17.54 Fem long beige dress accompany x Fiddler walk from Allison[?] side to doorway of McFresh female allowed to chose article from Fiddlers hand for banknotes
These
notes were hastily scribbled by PCs Michael Samuels and Anthony
Timmons as they focused their 10x50 binoculars from between the
slats of a boarded first floor window, on the activities of
various individuals in Claremont Road, Moss Side, Manchester, on
a pleasant summer evening in 1994. Later they wrote up
their notes.
At 16.40 hours a white male wearing a red ‘T’ shirt and jeans arrived on foot from the direction of Princess Road. As he approached [Errol] FIDDLER crossed over Claremont Road into our view and took the Male to the side of McFresh Bakery . Here a transaction took place and again whilst still with FIDDLER this man ‘shook down’ the contents of a small snap bag...
At 17.54 hours FIDDLER crossed the main road into our view , accompanied by a white female wearing a long beige dress. They went to the front door of McFresh bakery where the female was allowed to choose a small item from FIDDLERS open hand, in exchange for bank notes.
Manchester’s
Moss Side is notorious for drug dealing, and nowhere more so than
Claremont Road, so the officers knew what they were looking
for. Their notes recording these and several other alleged
transactions became the basis of a case against Errol
Fiddler that he was dealing in heroin and crack cocaine, and
landed him with a prison sentence of six and a half years
after a trial in Liverpool Crown Court in February 1996.
Their
surveillance was part of ‘Operation Calow’, conducted
by plain clothes officers from the Drugs Unit based at Greenheys
police station. Backing them up were other officers in
unmarked cars, parked in nearby streets and in radio contact.
Furnished with descriptions of those thought to have purchased
drugs off Errol Fiddler (and others) they followed them and
arrested them. They took them to local police stations,
searched them, confiscated the drugs they had on them, cautioned
them and released them. The drugs were sent for
laboratory analysis, and found to be class A prohibited
substances.
The police
arrested Errol some days later, and searched his home, but found
none of the paraphernalia of a drug dealer - digital scales, self-seal
bags, mobile phone, mountain bike, cash - that might incriminate
him. When interviewed, he denied he had any involvement in
drug dealing. So the evidence against him consisted only of
the observations and the arrests of the alleged customers. It
was convincing - the officers saw what they believed to be drug
dealing, then found those who appeared to be customers with drugs
on them immediately afterwards. Why should we not believe
such evidence? And why should we doubt that ‘Operation
Callow’ was the exercise in law enforcement it claimed to be?
First,
Errol is an unlikely suspect. Aged 41, he has no previous
convictions and no record of drug dealing or use. He has no
money that might be the profits of drug dealing, and no flashy
possessions that might have been bought with such money.
Second,
what could officers Samuels and Timmons have seen, secretly
peering through the gaps between boards? Their notes have
the flavour of authenticity as a record prepared under difficult
conditions, yet why did they not use any of the technology the
police love so much - high resolution cameras with telephoto
lenses? Eight months later, when they permitted defence
solicitors to view the observation post, everything had changed.
The boards had gone, and new glass put in the windows. The
police refused to let the solicitors’ representatives make
their own observations, and refused to release information about
the premises, in case the owner might be at risk from reprisals.
Yet everyone knew where they were. They knew not only which premises were being used, but that the police were using them. Half an hour after the notes quoted above were made, Samuels tells us:
A build up of persons was then noticed outside the observation point. This included ... FIDDLER... and approximately [13] others, several of whom were wearing bandannas and face masks. At approximately 1850 hours a group of these males went to the rear of the observation point and began forcing entry via the rear door. Minutes later several males entered the building, some carrying sticks and began searching. A number of these men then came upstairs [they arrested one and] the remainder turned and ran down the stairs leaving the building.
In other
words, local people knew they were there and were sick of being
watched by incompetent cops as they enjoyed a pleasant evening
socialising on the street, and so decided to flush them out.
Errol was one of the spectators, not one of those who entered the
building. But, having made fools of themselves, the police
needed something to show for their work.
Which
brings us back to the other evidence against Errol: his supposed
customers. Could they confirm that they bought drugs off
him? Perhaps we will never know. For these
individuals, who we might expect to have seen as crucial
prosecution witnesses, gave false addresses when they were
arrested, and vanished into thin air, never to be traced by
police or defence lawyers. How careless of officers
not to check their addresses before letting them go. But
there is another possible explanation. These people could
have been part of the set up: grasses working with the police or
perhaps undercover officers passing through Claremont Road
and then expecting to be picked up round the corner. One
gave her name as Donna Marie Saunders. Another gave
his correct name - Trevor MacDonald - but a false address.
He was already well known to the police, as a user and dealer in
class A drugs, for which he had previous convictions.
The case
was tried in Liverpool, because Manchester Crown Court was too
busy. The first jury couldn’t agree on a
verdict, so a second trial was held five months later. We
understand that PC Samuels does not enjoy a 100% success rate
with his cases - a number of previous cases have been thrown out
after allegations that, for example, he planted drugs on a
suspect. And recently, one of the convictions they obtained
using such methods was overturned on appeal.
What we
find difficult to understand is why the police appear so
amateurish. It’s not as if drug dealing was a new
problem for them in Moss Side. Nor is it difficult to find
out who the street level dealers are - anyone can do that simply
by trying to buy drugs. Reporters for TV companies quite
easily expose drug dealers (for example, a recent World in Action
programme exposed dealers in Nottingham clubs). We must
chose between two explanations of amateurish ‘operations’
like ‘Calow’. One is that Manchester police
are stupid, have learned nothing from years of experience, and
can’t use modern technology. The other is that they
don’t want to arrest drug dealers. In 49 pages of
condensed notes, Errol only appears a few times. Some of
the others observed to be selling drugs come with
ready-made code names to hide their identities, given in quotes
from page one as ‘Reaper’, ‘Cowboy’,
‘Robin’ an d so on.
Real
dealers make deals with police. They supply
information and in return they’re allowed to carry on
working. We could speculate about whether anything
else besides information is part of the deal, but that
would be to condemn the police without sufficient evidence -
something we would never do. Perhaps they are always
after the elusive Mr Big - the main supplier, to whom a street-level
dealer might possibly lead them one day.
Until Mr
Big comes into view, they have to appear to be doing something.
And when they saw the crowd in Claremont Road looking up at them
in their ‘secret’ hideout, they picked out individuals
they recognised - one of whom was Errol.
There are
ways, we think, in which we can show that the case against Errol
was nonsense. One way is to find out what else
these sad cops Samuels and Timmons and the rest of the
Greenheys Drugs Unit have been up to. Do you know of other
cases in which they’ve been involved? Have you come
across this technique of using people to act as ‘buyers’
so as to give an appearance of drug dealing going on? Do
you know of anyone else caught up in ‘Operation Calow’
or any similar operations? Any information sent to
CONVICTION will be passed on to Errol’s lawyers.
Errol
Fiddler TH3913, H. M. Prison, Warrington Road, Risley, Warrington,
Cheshire WA3 6BP
Errol is supported by the Manchester campaign of the families and friends of wrongly convicted prisoners, Innocent