Bertie Smalls
| Bertie Smalls | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Derek Creighton Smalls 1935 Bampton, England |
| Died | January 31, 2008 (aged 72–73) Prague, Czech Republic |
Derek Creighton "Bertie" Smalls (1935 – January 31, 2008) 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.
In 1972, Sir Robert Mark became Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. That year, the annual total of armed robberies in the Metropolitan district was 380 – partly because the culture was rife with bribe-taking, sharing in the proceeds of crime and "verballing", or fabricating evidence against suspects. Sir Robert felt compelled to remind his detectives which side of the law they were supposed to be on, he told them in his inaugural address: "A good police force is one that catches more criminals than it employs."
At the centre of Sir Robert's focus was Criminal Investigation Department, and its pinnacle the Flying Squad – Ken Drury, commander of the Flying Squad and one of his inspectors, Alistair Ingram, later went to prison for corruption.
Sir Robert pushed such investigation – of names such as Mehmet Arif, George Davis, Ronnie Knight, Freddie Foreman, Micky McAvoy – out to the suburban regions, who needed to employ new tactics to catch the bigger criminals they were now faced with.
Derek Creighton "Bertie" Smalls was born in the East End of London and was a career criminal.
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Wikipedia