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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Death of a West End drug den Philip Nettleton and Keith Dovkants This is London Friday 19 May 2000 SOURCE: This is London PUB DATE: 19 May 2000 Death of a West End drug den by Philip Nettleton and Keith Dovkants The mission was clearly defined and everyone knew the risks. Inside a heavily fortified building on Charing Cross Road, Yardie gangsters stood guard over a highly organised mass market in drugs. The building was protected by a network of security systems including closed-circuit television cameras and look-outs posted in the surrounding streets suppled with mobile phones to raise the alarm. Doors were backed up by steel shutters; others were filled in with concrete blocks. Reports indicated that the drug gang "soldiers" were armed, some with guns, others with machetes and electric cattle prods. The mission was to halt the drug dealing and arrest the gang leaders. It looked like mission impossible. The full account of how Scotland Yard planned and executed the raid on what was believed to be London's biggest drug den has been revealed for the first time as individuals arrested in the operation are convicted and sentenced. It is a story of meticulous planning, daring and, above all, courage. It begins with reports of an extraordinary criminal business based in the old EMI recording studios in the West End's Tin Pan Alley. Scotland Yard had already been alerted when Evening Standard reporters investigated claims that drugs were being sold by dealers backed up by Yardie gunmen. The building in Charing Cross Road was a warren of soundproofed rooms where some of Britain's best known stars once recorded their hits. In the summer of 1998, it was being rented by a sinister couple who were running a club, the Backbeat, as a front for drug dealing on an astonishing scale. Drug Squad officers could hardly believe the information they were receiving. According to one estimate, 50 kilograms of cannabis were being sold every week, mostly to youngsters who crowded the place. Between 5.30pm and 3am there would be 300 to 400 revellers who paid £2 for entry. In rooms labelled "Social" and "Chill Out" people openly used drugs. Through a heavy fog of cannabis smoke people danced to heavy techno and jungle music; others played pool; in a "smoking room" up to 100 people sat on the floor passing joints around. More than £120,000 had been spent on general improvements including a dedicated sports bar with large screens showing football matches. In the basement packaged bags of drugs were carefully weighed before being sent upstairs to be sold. They were passed out through a small hole in an internal wall by an unseen person who revealed only two fingers in a surgical glove to hand out the package and take a £10 or £20 note. The clientele came from all over Europe - the club was advertised in student magazines and signs inside were written in four languages. Detectives set up a surveillance unit in a building across the road and undercover officers infiltrated the club membership, sold for £2. They learned that the operation was run by Maryann Quinn, a remarkable woman in her late thirties who boasted of a legal background as a solicitor. She enforced her strict regime with her boyfriend, former heavyweight boxer Floyd Alexander, 40, and up to 20 Yardies. These "soldiers" were extraordinarily loyal and called Quinn "mum". If anyone crossed her they reacted swiftly and brutally. On one occasion they stuck a cattle prod into a difficult customer, sending electric shocks through his body. The police believed a network of outside drug dealers was also targeting the club membership and a spin-off of the illegal activity was a rise in crime in the Tin Pan Alley neighbourhood. Senior police officers called a high-level meeting to decide how to combat the drug den threat. From this meeting emerged the plan that was to become Operation Legrand. It hinged on the element of surprise. Five months of surveillance and infiltration had taught police that the Backbeat club was set up like a fortress. Even the floors were reinforced with steel. The idea of smashing a way in with sledgehammers was quickly dismissed. The police decided to take a lesson from the masters of mission impossible, the SAS. In November 1988, officers of the Yard's SO 19 specialist firearms squad and the City police's tactical firearms unit were called together and briefed on what was to become the biggest armed police operation yet mounted. The plan was to hit the club in three waves, two from ground level and one from the roof. On 30 November, the day before the raid, armed units were secretly slipped into position around the building while snipers took up position on the roofs of surrounding business premises. No one knew whether the Yardie soldiers on duty would make a fight of it. Every officer was issued with body armour. At 3pm on 1 December, a final briefing was held at an army barracks in north London. Then Operation Legrand was put into action. Two articulated lorries drove slowly through central London; one came to a halt in St Giles High Street near Tottenham Court Road Tube, the other appeared to break down outside the Backbeat club. The lookouts watched with idle interest as the lorry ground to a halt. Then, at a pre-arranged radio signal, all hell broke loose. A unit of SO19 men, all in body armour and balaclavas, swooped down from the roof of the old EMI building high above the street. They abseiled 30 feet on ropes and kicked their way through the upper floor windows. As two waves of officers - 120 armed police in all - poured out of the lorries, others joined them from hiding places to storm the front and back of the building. A series of explosions shook the street - the SO 19 men were throwing stun grenades into the rooms guarded by the Yardies. Their Heckler and Koch submachineguns were at the ready as they started rounding up club workers and customers. A total of 380 other officers joined the operation as detectives dashed through the warren of rooms hunting that their main quarry, codenamed Florida and Utah. Alexander - Utah - was arrested in an office. Quinn - Florida - was picked up later at her home in Brixton. Inside three minutes the biggest armed operation in British police history was over. A hundred people had been detained and Samurai swords, machetes and £125,000 in cash were among 2,000 items confiscated. More than 90,000 bags of drugs were found along with 21kg of cannabis. No one had fired a shot. Judge Ader, at Snaresbrook Crown Court, later commended the police officers who took part. Quinn and Alexander were both jailed for five years for conspiracy to supply cannabis. A total of £750,000 in assets was seized. Det Supt Lewis Benjamin, one of the officers in charge of the investigation, said: "Quinn was the brains, Floyd the muscle. They were selling vast quantities of dope but it is known that if you wanted to get hard drugs there was an arrangement where you could get them from floating dealers inside and outside. "Quinn thought at worst she would get arrested for a lesser charge like possession. But we didn't do it like that. The aim was to arrest them, shut the club and improve the quality of life around the area which was rapidly deteriorating." This, police say, is what has happened. Since Operation Legrand crime levels around Tin Pan Alley have fallen by half. Mastermind chasing £1m by 40 Maryann Quinn was ruthless in her exercise of power as matriarch of the Backbeat drug den. With her faithful band of Yardie soldiers and bouncers no one dared question her. Not even Floyd Alexander, known in Yardie circles as Tank. The former amateur boxer and hard man was her business partner but it was she who gave the orders. Quinn was driven by money. She surrounded herself with it - when police raided her home they found £78,000 in £10 notes hidden about the house. There was also £7,500 in coins from the club's pool tables. She called this "loose change". The club was turning over £3 million a year. On a good night it took £35,000 and profits were running at £100,000 a month. Alexander, who like her has Jamaican roots, had once been her lover but this did not stop her skimming off most of the profits. "She was taking the lion's share," said Det Supt Lewis Benjamin, who described her as "a very strong character and very devious". He added: "She had a BMW, several bank accounts and had paid off her mortgage. She had leases on numerous houses, flats and business property. She wanted to make a million and get out." Quinn was very close to doing this thanks to her shrewd business brain. She bought three Italian-made reinforced doors at a cost of £6,000 each in an attempt to foil a police raid and she supervised £120,000 worth of improvements at the club. The interior of the club was rough and ready, but Quinn spent thousands of pounds on her office. She was taking flying lessons and at one point put up £5,000 surety for a man accused of cocaine dealing. She made frequent visits to a Cash and Carry shop to buy large amounts of drinks and cigarette papers for rolling joints. When police raided the club they found 20,000 jumbo packets of cigarette papers. Quinn kept two rottweilers at her Brixton house and surrounded herself with Yardie toughs. According to detectives they served her loyally and even bought her a birthday cake. One of her protectors, a Yardie called Keggs, became her lover and she bore his child. This did not stop her betraying him. At Quinn and Alexander's joint trial they claimed that Keggs was the ringleader of the operation and that they were both forced to take part by the Jamaican gangsters she was employing. The jury convicted Alexander but could not reach a decision on whether Quinn was also guilty of conspiring to supply drugs. At a retrial in March this year she claimed that she was not only forced by the Yardies to turn a blind-eye to the drug dealing but also that Alexander was abusing and threatening her. She also said she was suffering clinical depression following the death of her father about five years ago. Her daily routine was to get-up at 11am and leave for the "office" at about midday in her gleaming BMW. Having made sure supplies were in for the night she would either shop or attend an ante-natal clinic. "This was an organised enterprise by two people who knew what they were doing," said Det Supt Benjamin. "Neither of them got involved in crimes they could easily be arrested for - they were a lot cleverer than that. There is a market for drugs and by doing it in a club, feigning legality, they didn't think they would get caught." Quinn had no police record, apart from a conviction for minor cheque book fraud in her early twenties. Her past baffles detectives. She is believed to be of Portuguese-Jamaican origin, but apart from using the names Da Costa and Pinto, there is nothing to confirm her background. According to police Quinn's plan was to amass as much money as she could by the time she was 40 next year then quit drug dealing. She wanted to move to New York where she had an investment portfolio. Her 40th birthday will now be spent in the mother and baby wing of Holloway prison. She will serve the first 18 months of her five-year sentence there.
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