Peter Bleksley - Former Scotland Yard Detective: Why I'm Hunting A Killer Who Has Been On The Run For 15 Years

Full transcript: Peter Bleksley on London Real

3:03 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Peter Bleksley, the former police detective turned author, playwright and broadcaster. You served in the Metropolitan Police Service for over two decades, walking the beat and later specializing in organized crime. You then went undercover working at Scotland Yard for over 10 years, posing as an international drug trafficker, weapons dealer and contract killer.

3:26 Later you were forced into the witness protection program for two years and suffered a mental breakdown since leaving the police force. You’ve written four books and started to star for six seasons in the Channel 4 reality show Hunted, where everyday members of the public become fugitives trying to escape capture. Your latest book, Manhunt, and your hit BBC podcast of the same name, details your ongoing pursuit of the double murder and Britain’s most wanted fugitive, Kevin Parle.

3:51 Peter, welcome to London Real. Thank you very much for having me. Big fan. I’m so glad you’re here. We’ve got a lot to talk about, from the book to the series and your whole history.

4:02 But I thought we’d start off and talk about police, because you have such a background there. And you know, I’ve spent 20 years in this country, so I’m a citizen and I’m gonna be buried in this city. I love it here. I love London. It’s part of my DNA.

4:17 My children were born here, but I also grew up in a different country where they police differently. So when I look at the Metropolitan Police, I see differences. And I still remember when I was 21 years old, I moved to New York City in 1993, and Mayor Giuliani had kind of just got there, and there was a police officer on every corner and New York scared the hell out of me, to be honest. I mean, I was a kid from San Diego, California, and I felt so good seeing those police officers there.

4:47 I felt like I could walk around that city. And the NYPD officer has a certain vibe to them, you know? They have a certain look, a certain build, a certain demeanor, for maybe that city, and it definitely promoted me feeling good. And in London it’s a different feel. It is now versus when I got here.

5:06 Maybe for when you were on the force, and I was wondering if you could tell me first of all, what do you think is the state of the Metropolitan Police? Is the vibe always going to be different in a city like London, because you police a community, and it depends on the community, and how has the police service changed over the years? I know it’s a lot of questions. Yeah. Well, but let’s just go back to New York ’93, if we may, because you had Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, as you’ve mentioned, and I think the police chief was Bill Bratton.

5:34 Yeah, sounds familiar. And they were both disciples of the “fixing broken windows” philosophy, which essentially said if you deal with the low-level crime, quite literally the broken windows, or in New York’s case at the time, it was the people that stood at traffic lights with a spongy cleaning your windscreen and then, almost in an intimidating kind of way, putting their hand out and wanting a few cents or a dollar or whatever, and they clamped down on that first. Zero tolerance, they called it.

6:07 Yeah. But it did have a title of “fixing broken windows.” Okay, there were books written about it, and it kind of became a bit of a thing. Now, it proved to be at that time, and we’re talking about many decades ago, it was seen as being a rip-roaring success, and there were many people that wanted to import it into the UK because we also had our spongy people at traffic lights and whatever. You know, what happens in the States, we so often import a few years later.

6:42 But was it kind of sustainable? It was for New York because they simply had the numbers of officers to be able to do that. Now, to do that policing, as you said, you need quite literally a police officer on every street corner, and in the UK, whether it be London or Manchester or Glasgow, that quite simply is not going to happen. So if we fast forward to where we’re at now, we are on the back of a decade or more of austerity. You know, the government policy to slash and burn public spending in every aspect, and policing suffered more than most, I would suggest.

7:29 The 20,000 police officer jobs were just butchered in the UK, 30,000 or more back office jobs. So civilian workers did vital roles behind the scenes. Those jobs got lost, and quite simply you cannot slash those kind of police and police staff numbers and not expect there to be some kind of repercussion. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister at the time, Theresa May, who quite simply did not understand modern policing, you know, drove this home. She had the temerity to accuse the police of crying wolf when officers were saying, “You keep cutting numbers, there’s going to be repercussions.”

8:18 So we’ve kind of found ourselves in a situation whereby the police are chronically understaffed, underfunded, overworked and demoralized. The current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, you know, loves the sound of it and said, “I’m going to recruit 20,000 police officers,” which sounds like a great headline, but it doesn’t really cut to the core of the problem, because all those 20,000 officer jobs that were cut took thousands upon thousands of years of policing experience with them, and policing experience cannot be bought. It’s vital, it’s absolutely crucial.

9:01 And now, whilst there is a recruitment drive going on to try and build those numbers up, you don’t need twenty thousand. You need forty or maybe fifty thousand, actually, because the police are still hemorrhaging officers in frighteningly high numbers because they are overworked, underpaid and demoralized. So consequently, policing in the UK sadly still remains largely in crisis. Okay. And the knife crime numbers that the mayor has been blamed for, them going to these shocking levels.

9:40 I mean, is that a consequence of that, or are there some potential solutions, you know, in your mind as an ex-officer? It is an absolute tragedy, the tide of teenage bloodshed that flows through our streets. It really is. Lives have been needlessly lost. Now, can you use a blunt instrument to try and fix that?

10:06 And I’ve actually been at one point when it was in such a crisis and so many lives were being lost, they still are, but I was thinking, you know, shall we go to the military in terms of that, you know, a uniform presence on every street corner? All right. Governments are highly unlikely to do that, to put a uniform military presence on the streets, because it cuts to the very core of undermining policing. If, for example, and saying, you know, policing and therefore the Home Office and the government can’t cope, but also military doesn’t necessarily police.

10:43 Police is about community. Military is more about fighting. It’s more about imposing democracy through the end of a barrel of a gun, and of course that, you know, sticks in the back of my throat, and many others, but you know, we were at crisis point not so long ago, and we are still having catastrophic numbers of people losing their lives. Of course murders have always happened, sadly, and always will, but in terms of gangs and young people losing their lives, something very much needs to be done.

11:23 I know the men are trying, and in essence, again, this is seen as being a bit clumsy sometimes, because they kind of get, they’ve started up a Violent Crime Reduction Task Force, and they will sort of focus on an area where there’s been a lot of bloodshed, and that’s a short-term fix, but when they go, because there’s another area that requires their attention, then what happens? It’s a very complex subject. It cuts across poverty, social deprivation, lack of opportunity, exclusion from school, absent or poor parenting.

12:04 All these things are factors, not in every case, of course, but the major thing which I think should be addressed, could be addressed, is that so much of this bloodshed is over the illegal drugs industry, because we have a global multi-multi-billion dollar, pound, euro, yen, call it whatever, multi-billion dollar industry which we leave entirely in the hands of criminals, which quite frankly is ludicrous, because in an illegal and unregulated world, if somebody rips you off, you can’t go to a court of law for your redress and have a judge make a judgment, a rule in favour of one party or the other in a civil dispute. In the illegal drugs industry, when there is a dispute, a fallout, the weapon that is used is violence. The violence is a currency within that industry.

13:17 We all know that thousands upon thousands of lives have been lost, you know, ever since Richard Nixon in 1971 declared drugs public enemy number one. You know, in a large part of my career I was fighting that War on Drugs, as the press named it after Nixon’s speech, and the UK responded with the Misuse of Drugs Act in 1971. But of course it is a war that cannot and will not ever be won. And the sooner people wake up, politicians and the public, and realize that we need to regulate that industry.

14:01 And how will we regulate the manufacture and the retail of that industry? We legalize and then we regulate. And of course some people balk at the very thought of legalizing all drugs, and I’m not for legalizing the lot, not a piecemeal bit here, you know, cannabis this week and maybe something else in another five years. No, legalize and regulate, regulate the lot, and rip this industry from the vice-like grip of organized crime, so that the growing of the coca leaves, for example, can be done in South America, but through an intergovernmental agreement, treaty, call it what you will, the transportation of valueless coca leaves in huge transporters will not be attacked by pirates, because it’s largely a worthless product until it sails into the UK, lands at Tilbury Docks, for example, and then gets transported to a major manufacturing unit where it goes through a process which is as safe and as non-toxic as you can make it.

15:19 Not entirely, I get that. You know, I’m not rampantly naive over this. We could be here for days, to be perfectly honest. We’re talking about this subject. It’s a passion of mine, and then through what I will clumsily call drugstores, we retail all these drugs.

15:35 We sell all these drugs, and you know what? The streets of the UK are not going to be awash with people off their nut on drugs. The whole industry is about supply and demand, and the demand quite simply will not go away. That demand has to be satisfied. But you know what?

15:56 And I’ve got teenage kids, right, who have had to suffer sitting around the dinner table with me and their mother having conversations about drugs since they were 10, 11 years old, because you know there’s a half a century of policing experience around our dinner table. So poor kids, but you know, and we’ve talked about it endlessly, and they’re not in the slightest bit interested in going near any drugs. But if they were, where would I want them to buy those drugs?

16:26 In the corner of a gloomy pub car park, from some bloke with a hood up and possibly a knife or a nine mil down the back of his trousers, who has an interest in only selling my child more and more and more drugs, probably more addictive drugs, so that his custom becomes a regular thing. Or do I want my teenager who’s going to experiment, maybe with a joint or a line of cocaine or an ecstasy tablet, to go to a licensed retail outlet where they buy those drugs, where we know where they were manufactured, we know what’s in them, and they get advice on how to take them? Only this weekend we’ve had a tragic loss of young lives in the UK, in a city in the UK.

17:18 I think the death toll was four this afternoon when I last read about it. Four needless young people died, and the police are saying don’t take drugs in this city, we’ve clearly got a contaminated batch that’s been overdosed. It would be history that would never happen again, because the drugs would be as pure as they possibly could, and I’ve had this conversation on the show many times over the last few years. I had this conversation with Howard Marks before he died, and he talked about this, and we’ve all seen the example that Portugal is with the decriminalization of drugs, which is different from what you’re saying, but kind of, there’s a few choices.

17:54 It’s the way it is now, which I think most people would agree is a mess. There is the decriminalization, the Portugal model, and then there is your model, the Bleksley model of legalize it all, regulate it all, have it down at the corner shop, and there’s arguments for all three. Howard Marks actually said to me, he said, “Brian, I have friends of mine that won’t take something if it’s illegal. If it’s strictly illegal, they’ll stay away from these things.”

18:18 And so critics of your plan might say, if my kid goes to Boots and sees heroin on offer, cocaine on offer, they might be more likely to take it if it’s in that package. Now that’s what some critics would say, that availability might give more access to people who would normally stay away from those back alleys and those things that are illegal. Now, what do you say to that? There may be a spike in usage after the drugs are legalized and they’re regulated and they’re more readily accessible to all.

18:52 There may be a spike in usage, but because we, I say we, the state, the government, will raise billions and billions in revenue from the sale of these drugs. What that will enable is that our children, from primary school age, will be educated about drugs. It won’t be a taboo subject, which people don’t want to go near. You know, my youngest kids were educated at school away from cigarettes. That all happened in school, and my kids, bearing in mind that my wife and I are foolish, filthy, smelly, idiotic smokers, my kids won’t go anywhere near cigarettes.

19:42 It was educated out of them when they were that big, and they went to school. Now we will be able to afford to do exactly the same with drugs, get in those schools, get to those children early. I’m not going to say we’ll end up in a drug-free nirvana, and in a generation’s time we close all the drugstores down. Because obviously we won’t. That will never happen.

20:04 That would be rampantly naive of me. Yeah. And I had a gentleman by the name of Dr. Carl Hart, who works at Columbia University in America, and he has a great TED talk that’s titled “Let’s Stop Abusing Drug Users,” and he implies, or says, states that as humans we all like to perturb our consciousness, whether it’s caffeine or going to the movies or alcohol or cigarettes. But you know, a lot of these legal drugs are drugs. Caffeine and nicotine, most people say that’s not a drug, but it is.

20:32 We like to experiment with our consciousness. That’s what we do, and we always will, and so there is no nirvana where people won’t use drugs. But we have this current state where you’re saying most of the crime is somehow drug related, somehow, whether it’s money laundering, all of that, and you’re saying that would be cut out if we did this. What do you mean, much of it? Okay.

20:51 Now, bearing in mind that you would be taking organized crime’s largest revenue stream away from them, so they wouldn’t quickly, they’re not going to give it up without a fire. But if you beat organized crime on three fronts, you leave them pretty much with nowhere to go, and that is price, purity and availability. So you just beat them on all those regards, so those drugstores will have to be open 24/7. You know, those ones are clumsily named drugstores, right?

21:25 You know, so you beat them on availability, because if you close them at 2am, the drug dealers will come out at 3am. You know, so they’d have to be open, but petrol stations are, but also it’s really not… I mean, for example, London or the UK couldn’t do this independently of the international community, could they? Because that would create a bunch of instabilities, if it’s legal here and illegal there. Portugal led the way with their decriminalization.

21:47 There wasn’t a Europe-wide, 29-state kind of agreement there. Okay. Someone has to be a pioneer, someone’s got to grasp the nettle and set the example. Canada and its legalization of cannabis, you know, they struck out for freedom in that regard and did it, and it has its critics. I understand that, but so many of the critics of my standpoint, dare I say it, are Mrs Miggins who lives in the Cotswolds, perhaps in her lovely country cottage and is far removed from the streets of central London and our other great cities, where young people are losing their lives in increasing numbers, and she might read the Daily Mail, for example, and go, “Legalization!

22:37 Shock horror!” Never. Well, unfortunately Mrs Miggins isn’t really fully briefed and aware of what’s going on. And I have, I would have a message for her, and that would be, I would love to come to your cottage and have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee and a chat with you about it, and I can guarantee that wheresoever she may be, as a complete stranger, that I would be to that town, village, hamlet, whatever it may be, I reckon within half an hour I could source whatever I wanted in terms of illegal drugs.

23:11 It’s coming to your doorstep, Mrs Miggins, if it’s not already there, courtesy of County Lines drug networks being established. Drug dealers are very inventive. They’re always looking for new markets and new routes and new methods of smuggling, importation, transportation and all of that. They’re smart, that’s what they do. We need to deny them this multi-billion pound industry.

23:39 Okay, what don’t you like about decriminalization Even as a method of getting to legalization, what don’t you like about the Portugal model? Why can’t it’s a halfway house. Okay, it’s a halfway house. Come on. I think it should be all or nothing.

23:54 So how do you grade Portugal? What have they, what is it, what has worked and what has not worked? They’re pioneers, and in times in terms of not penalizing and criminalizing problematic drug users, I applaud them endlessly for that. Again, through the billions that we raise that we not only use in primary schools for education. But problematic drug users can get the help they need, and in so many cases the help they want.

24:26 It’s not for us to dictate what help might be appropriate, but I guarantee you many, many, many problematic drug users want help. They don’t want to be the prey of their dealers. They don’t want to be in the living conditions that they’re in. They don’t want to shorten their lives. They want help.

24:51 We could afford to do that. This is about harm reduction and people’s health, as well as denying the criminals control of their industry. Okay, but the decriminalization is only half of the problem. That talks really more about the users, but you still have the dealers. Yeah, and that’s, and that’s still going to be the same issues pretty much happening in Portugal, and you’re saying solve it all with one fell swoop?

25:15 Yeah, yeah, because dealers still get prosecuted in Portugal, you know, it’s not now legal to to to deal. You can still get arrested, and drugs never be legalized. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. The drug law reform movement in the UK is gathering pace.

25:30 Every day there are some wonderful people out there who make my opinions on it look like something clumsily scribbled on the back of a cigarette packet. You know, far brighter minds than mine who have really thought it out in considerable depth, and slowly, bit by bit, politicians are coming on board. You know, an SNP, Scottish National Party, MP, uh, proposed a bill last week in Parliament. You know, starting to go down this route, small incremental steps.

26:06 Personally, I’d like to take one giant stride, one giant leap for mankind, perhaps. To go right, organized crime, your days are over. We’ve got that industry now. They’re moving into other things anyway. They’re going into online crime, you know, and so much cyber crime and all of that, and some people are just determined to live a life of crime, and so they will be forced into something else.

26:32 It won’t all be rosy in the garden, I know. But in terms of the drugs industry, I would like us, we, our government to control it rather than crooks. Yeah, and I’ve had the same conversation multiple times with Professor David Nutt of Imperial College, who was the drug czar, and you know, he talks about exactly what you say. You just don’t know what the purity is. You don’t know the dose, and so that’s this big unknown, and that’s one of the biggest problems we have out there, is not having the right information and people not being educated.

27:01 I don’t know if he’s in for the, if he believes in the full legalization, but it’s some hybrid in there that he talks about as well. Um, and of course, so he got sacked, didn’t he? Well, he did, because he used a fact-based approach, and he said that horse riding was more dangerous than ecstasy, because David’s very witty, and his point was, is that riding horses is more dangerous than taking ecstasy, and that’s true if you look at the numbers. And yet he also said alcohol and tobacco were the most dangerous drugs, and nobody wants to hear that, because Mrs Miggins says that can’t be right.

27:34 Ecstasy is dangerous. I heard about those kids that die in clubs, but I have a drink and that’s okay. But if you look at the numbers, that’s not true, and that’s what David was pushing. And look, we need a fact-based, science-based approach here. The problem with legalizing drugs is it comes with so much emotion, and people have very uncomfortable relationships with their own selves, right?

27:53 We look at our own wants and needs and addictions, and the truth is Mrs Miggins probably had a couple, maybe small tastes of drugs in her earlier days, but she doesn’t remember those, and maybe now thinks that no one should have them. You know, we are a little hypocritical sometimes, even as humans, I think, when it comes to this subject. Yeah, well, you know, if Mrs Miggins is, say, 80 and living in the Cotswolds, then I very much doubt she had a dab, to be perfectly frank.

28:20 Okay. You know, the cocaine explosion was in the ’80s. Um, ecstasy came a little bit after that. You know, and prior to that, so drugs were so often the preserve of some in the entertainment industry, or those who could afford it, who lived a lot of entitled and privileged lives and had the necessary connections, and I came across all of those kind of people during my time, even to the point that at one point, when I was at Scotland Yard on the Central Drug Squad up there, I had an informant get in touch with me and said, “I can hand you Princess Margaret’s cocaine dealer on a plate.”

29:06 Right. And I said, “Right, that’s very interesting.” You know, my young, 25, enthusiastic mind, got completely carried away and rather excited at the thought of crashing through the gates of Buckingham Palace, you know, nicking Princess Margaret’s drug dealer on his way. And I had the identity and all of that, and got lots more information from this informant, who, you know, tried to convince me that this information was absolutely genuine, and I thought, well, this has got to be worth investigating and exploring to see whether it’s truthful or not.

29:43 And our job was to arrest drug dealers. So I, you know, typed up what I knew, quite literally old-school typewriter brightness, is that long ago. Um, you know, typed it all up, did the report, took it into my bosses, said, “Come on, let’s go nick Princess Margaret’s drug dealer. That’d be a bit of fun with it, Buckingham Palace, kicking doors down and all that.” Anyway, gave the report to my bosses at Scotland Yard, and funnily enough I never heard anything more about that.

30:13 It all seemed to disappear into a black hole. But what did you learn from that experience? “There you go. I was too busy. I was out making another deal the following day, or working undercover, or screeching through the streets of London, all the home counties, or where, so wherever it may have been.”

30:29 So, you know, ah, right, okay, all right. So there’s some favoritism on the force. You learned, um, let me just ask a couple more questions about the police. Uh, what about leadership of the police? What about how the police feel about themselves, about being respected by the community?

30:45 I mean, I saw recently Extinction Rebellion. They parked a boat on the corner of Oxford Street and Regent Street, and, uh, chained themselves to the boat and super-glued themselves to the boat. A Met police officer went there and took a selfie, video, and danced with them, and they left him there for a week. For me, that doesn’t seem like policing to me, and I’m wondering what does that seem like to you, and do I not get it? And is there leadership in the force to back the officers?

31:12 Brian, you’ve got a great habit of asking one question that has about 15 topics wrapped up in it, right? Um, but also I’ll, I’ll, I’ll deal with, let me deal with the Extinction, I was there, okay? When that boat was there that afternoon, okay, because I do a lot of commentary about crime and policing on the radio and the TV, and all of that, so, um, and I was going to speak about it on a news channel that evening. So of course I like to think of myself as a broadcast professional.

31:39 I went there to see with my own eyes what was going on. Well, the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up, because I was so irritated by Extinction Rebellion just disrupting people’s lives as they were trying to go around there about their business, that I got really irritated, and I thought, and I do still think, that a lot of their campaigning is absolute numbskull, knuckle-dragging idiocy, and it irritates people rather than winning hearts and minds of people. You know, of course, and I try to do my level best in terms of the environment.

32:22 You know, I’ll give you an example. Today I was very kindly offered transport here, a car to come here today. Did I? No, I turned it down. I came on public transport, with my mask and all of that, because I do not want to increase my carbon footprint.

32:38 Am I perfect in that regard? No, but I won’t be tired of anybody who comes to my house and drops a beer bottle top in the garbage bin instead of recycling it. You know, I’m a bit of any recycling kind of, um, fundamentalist, and they have been for a long, long time. I’m all across the environment. I completely agree, and I absolutely understand that we are heading for an environmental catastrophe which will probably wipe out humankind if we don’t do something, and do something about it quickly.

33:10 I get it. I understand their message. I’m actually on side, but I think the way they go around about their campaigning, they’re losing friends instead of gaining friends, and so I’m very, very vehemently against much of what they do and have done, including plonking that boat in Oxford Circus. Now, onto policing, this whole thing about policing losing their perception of neutrality started many years ago when cops started dancing at the Notting Hill Carnival, you know, the carnival that’s held at the end of August in London, and cops would, were beginning to dance with revellers there, and all that kind of stuff.

33:55 Criticism started as well. It dates back that long, and we’ve seen a lot of it, you know, right up until today, with cops taking the knee at BLM marches and all that kind of stuff. And you know, it’s a difficult one. I personally think the police should be brave enough and their leaders should be courageous enough to stand up and say, you know what, we’re not going to dance, we’re not going to skateboard, we’re not going to take the knee, but that doesn’t mean to say that privately, beneath this cloth, we agree with your cause, but we are the police.

34:42 We must adopt a position of neutrality. So consequently we won’t. I saw a police officer, senior police officer from Kent Police, a few weeks ago standing holding the flag of the Traveller community. Now I know that irritated many people, and I asked the question. I would ask the question of that same police officer: would he hold the Palestinian flag if he had a Palestinian community living within Kent, for example?

35:16 Well, would he? Because we know where it started, but where is it going to end? It should end with courageous police officers standing up and saying, “We are a neutral body whenever we put on that cap, wear that uniform, stick that hi-vis on, or even, you know, the full public order gear with the helmet and the shield. Our position has to be that of a neutral one. We are neutral.

35:46 We are against crime. If you commit crime, we will deploy all the resources and tactics that we need, but other than that we are neutral, which means we serve everyone except lawbreakers. We will serve everyone, no matter their colour, creed, race, religion, gender. Everyone will serve everyone neutrally and equally. But the genie is out of the bottle now, because if one goes down on me and another doesn’t, then somebody’s going to say, well, don’t you care?

36:23 Are you racist?” It needs courageous senior police leaders to stand up and reclaim the neutral ground, because that’s where policing should live. And that seems so obvious to me when you state it that way, and yet the police chief is not obviously giving that direction and leadership to the force. But we have 43 police chiefs in the UK, because we’ve got 43 different police forces with different uniforms, different leaders and sometimes different policies from force to force, but they have all their representative bodies, you know, Chief Police Officers Council and all of that, and at the end of the day, so much of what they do is dictated by the Home Office, you know, and the Home Secretary is in charge of that, one of the most senior political positions in the land.

37:14 Well, is it that difficult to stand up and say we serve all equally, except law breakers, and then we deal with them according to the threat or the offence or the situation we find ourselves in? But other than that, no flags, no face painting, no dancing, no skateboarding, no makeup, no taking the knee, nothing. We’re neutral. I agree. Now, some would say that’s very old school, but the police has to be neutral by definition, otherwise it looks like you have favoritism towards one group or the other, and by definition that’s not policing.

37:52 Correct. Like I quite agree, you know, and it doesn’t mean to say that we are not you know, in favor of every law-abiding man, woman, child, however you want to identify. We’re with you, but we are neutral, and things have got to a point whereby you know, one dancing cop versus a non-dancing cop can be perceived as on our side, not on our side. One cop on the knee, one standing up, on our side, not on our side. They’re probably both on their side, but where’s the leadership?

38:30 Where are the leaders from their ivory towers on high, with their vast salaries, doing their job? Going neutrality, because I’ll tell you what, the men and women in the police service in the UK, including the one on the knee and the one standing up and the one skateboarding, and the one who’s not, generally speaking, the overwhelming majority of them are wonderful, fabulous, decent people who would be there for you, me, everyone, in our hour of need. Also tell me about these recruits on the force, and especially the new recruits.

39:14 Are we getting the best of the best? Are we getting people that are ready to do that job, that are physically fit to do that job, that have the presence to do that job, because I don’t always see that? And I’m not saying these people don’t have a hard job, and I’m not saying there’s very qualified people on that force. I know they are. But as a cross-section, if I take a look at one in London right now and take 50 of them and put them there, I don’t know if I would stack them up with an NYPD officer, not that they have to be the same, but I think you understand what I’m asking here.

39:44 Yeah. Okay. There’s some… I need to let you know there’s some very fit police officers hidden beneath hi-vis and, like, the utility belt they wear these days, which Batman would have been proud of. You know, there’s some very thick cops under there.

40:01 There are, of course, some unfit ones, but there are fitness tests that they have to pass every year. Many people would like them to be more strident than they are, and I kind of get that, but of course policing needs to reflect society. Excuse me. In my day, you know, late seventies when I joined, you had to be five foot ten or something if you were a man, and you had to be pretty darn fit, and sharp, and the uniform had to be… oh yes, I mean, that creases down the sleeve, creases in the trousers, you know, regulation haircut and all that kind of stuff, but times move on.

40:40 We’ve moved away from that now, and actually I think it is very, very difficult for a cop to look pristine now because of the uniforms they wear. They’ve got a stab vest. You try making a stab vest look smart and span as if it belonged on a military parade square. It’s virtually impossible. You try wearing a high-vis coat and making that look smart and span.

41:01 So they kind of have my sympathy in that regard. You can always have your shoes clean, of course, you know, right? And kind of you know, so it’s looking very difficult for uniform, and the look is important, because then you have to get respect of the people on the streets, especially the kids on the streets. Yes, yes, but I think, you know, the police officers on the street have very little say over the uniform they’re given and the equipment they’re given.

41:31 Um, there are of course you know, focus groups and the like, which bounce the ideas around and might canvass their opinion every now and again on which is your preference, but essentially modern policing uniforms are not overly designed to look, as I say, like they belong on a parade square. Now, back to recruitment and the cops on the front line. Yeah. So much experience has been lost, okay, through austerity and through people just bailing out, because policing has changed entirely from what it was in my day.

42:06 But on that note, you know, when I joined it was essentially good guys, bad guys, cops, robbers, and it was a far simpler job, far, far simpler job, and a lot more fun, I would venture to suggest. Now, of course, policing has become the one-stop shop for all of society’s ills, and it’s unrecognizable from what I did. Absolutely unrecognizable. Far more difficult and challenging now than it ever was in my day. Can you go into detail on this?

42:37 So when you were there, it was, those are the robbers, we know who they are, they do a specific type of thing, and our job is to stop them from doing that. These days a police officer might get called for one of 100 different things that all require a different response: psychological response, physical deterrent response, you name it. Now we call the police and expect them to solve all of our problems, all of society’s ills, mental health, for example.

43:04 You know, is that a policing issue? Somebody’s having a mental health crisis at home. Is that a policing issue? Unless somebody is in danger, in imminent danger, then I say no, it is a mental health services issue. But what’s happened to those services, again, through a decade or more of austerity, they’ve been butchered, and those services simply don’t exist.

43:31 So it falls upon the police, and of course you know, social workers, mental health workers don’t provide a 24/7 service. Who does? The good old police. Again, so they get all of that kind of stuff. In many regards I’m delighted that things are now the police’s job, like domestic violence, which back in my day was barely recognized as a thing, and I dread to think what horrors went on behind closed doors that we simply didn’t know about.

44:05 So that’s great, but yeah, literally everything falls at the police’s feet these days. What else is thrown in there that wasn’t there back in your day? I mean, the domestic violence, but you think that’s good because at least it’s being addressed. But it does require a completely different skill set, and we’re seeing this in the US as well, than, you know, a violent crime. But what else is thrown into the police that they have to solve that they didn’t have to back in your day?

44:30 Safeguarding, social media, right? Crime on the internet, somebody putting the wrong topping on somebody’s pizza, and I’m not being flippant, people have run 999 for that. Everything. It’s the police’s bag. They have my utmost sympathy.

44:49 I think overwhelmingly they do a remarkable job. I think a lot of the time it’s lions led by donkeys, donkeys who are desperate to climb that greasy pole and ascend the ranks as far and as fast as I possibly can. Are you talking about politicians? No, the senior police officers. Or senior police officers, you know?

45:11 Okay. In my day, um, a lot of the senior police officers, predominantly detectives as I saw it, because I didn’t do a long time in uniform, there was the scourge of freemasonry polluting the senior ranks and the junior ranks in policing, and let me tell you, there is no place for freemasonry in policing. What does that do to policing? It corrupts it, it ruins it, it wrecks it, because people take an allegiance to freemasonry, whereas, actually, excuse me, pal, you’ve got to serve the public.

45:43 How on earth, imagine, heaven forbid, you’re the victim of an assault, okay? So there you are, there is the assailant, and up turns a police officer who happens to be a freemason. You’re not, he is. Would you want that officer investigating that crime against you? Of course you wouldn’t.

46:05 Anybody who swears an allegiance to anything other than the public should not be in policing. Absolutely not. Now, I am told by those who still do the job these days that the influence of freemasonry has been diluted a lot, and that, of course, is a good thing, but I think you should not be allowed to be a police officer if you are a freemason. End of story. You should be forced to declare that.

46:35 You should be made to declare that, and if you are, take your pick: power, freemasonry or policing. You can’t do both. Okay. I hear now that amongst many senior officers there is a thing called Common Purpose, which is a company, an ethos. They call themselves some kind of training company or something, and they teach these ethos of Common Purpose, and I hear now that a lot of senior officers, if they want to climb the ranks, that might be something rather advantageous for them to do.

47:12 Okay. What does that mean, Common Purpose? Well, you can go onto their website. You know, Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, admitted that she’s been on one of their courses. They kind of boast about their alumni having senior positions in lots of different positions of seniority in both the private sector and the public sector.

47:38 But it appears, I’m, I’m hearing kind of rumblings that some officers not of the senior ranks are a little bit concerned that this whole Common Purpose ethos is becoming a bit too prevalent, and some officers that I speak to are becoming a bit uncomfortable with it. But you know, I’ve not been on a Common Purpose course, you know, I might do one day, if they’ll have me, although I suspect it will probably be on my pocket, but um, you know, that’s just what I hear, and it just questions the long-term motivations of these police officers. They might be thinking about the private sector in the future, and ultimately having an allegiance or responsibility that’s other than that to the public.

48:25 Is that dangerous in your mind? Oh, of course, with regards to freemasonry, absolutely. And the police continue to hemorrhage officers in record numbers because they are so overworked and underpaid and demoralized. Now, for example, if you go and get the financial investigators course under your belt, so you might be an an aspiring young detective. You get this course, which is a very valuable and important course to have, especially in the light of all the online crime, cyber crime and all that fraud, you know, which is rampant and under-reported.

48:58 And we have absolutely no idea what the true crime figures are, no idea, because millions upon millions of people are not reporting their crimes anymore, because they know the police won’t do anything about it. So crime is massively underreported. We don’t really know what the true landscape is. You go and get the financial investigators course under your belt, a very widely recognized qualification, then, instead of working shifts, weekends, nights, all of a sudden somebody from a bank might come along and say, I’ll double your salary, Monday to Friday, nine to five.

49:38 Who’s not going to jump ship? Okay, so you’re in danger of losing these people. It’s hard to recruit new officers as well when a police force that people have problems with, or people that don’t respect, so it’s a tricky time right now for the police, but I have to say it is still the greatest job on earth. And if I had my time again, and I was half my age and half my weight, I would sign up again in a heartbeat. Why is it the greatest job?

50:06 Because you can change people’s lives every single day of the week. You really, really make a difference, and people come to you when they’re in crisis. If you’re a front-line response officer and you are there picking up the pieces, helping people, saving lives, apprehending criminals, it’s a great job, and also there is so much diversity within it. If you like dogs, become a dog handler. If you like horses, join the Mounted Branch.

50:34 If you like boats, there’s a Marine Division of the Metropolitan Police and many other forces. You can be a diver, you can have a gun, you can investigate fraud, you can catch murderers, you can deal with serious and organized crime, you can go undercover and pretend to be a gangster. The wide range of jobs is almost endless, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful job, and I certainly wouldn’t deter anybody from doing it. Okay. If I’ve made you chief of the Met Police tomorrow, what are the three major changes you would make right away to solve a lot of these problems?

51:10 Uh, the first thing would be the neutrality statement that I would make public, and I would urge all the other chief constables from around the land to do that, so in other words have a major policing reset. Yeah. I would then make it, um, not possible for somebody to be a freemason and be in the police, and I would scrap the necessity for anybody to have a university degree to get in the police, because you don’t need a university degree to be in the cops.

51:44 You need common sense. And what would you do about the fact that the remit for police has expanded exponentially since you were on the force? How would you try to trim down some of those responsibilities, whether it’s social media crimes or pizza toppings or mental health? How do you narrow the scope of the police so they actually can do their job? It’s going to be a very busy first day for me, isn’t it?

52:09 I think I would, with regards to social media, for example, I would obviously have to walk the corridors of power and get a lot of support for putting the onus on these social media platforms to get their own house in order. I quite like the argument that before you have a social media account, you know, you should provide your passport number or your National Insurance number, and so you are, so a name can be put to that icon or that emoji, you know, which features on your, uh, on your account, because the keyboard warriors have had a go at me, particularly in the last 18 months while I’ve been hunting Kevin Parle. You know, they’ve, they’ve really tried to do their bit.

52:56 Um, likewise, when you apply for an email account, I would like to see some kind of real, strident verification required before you can do that. You need, you need to prove who you are. When you open a bank account, why shouldn’t you prove who you are when you open an email account or a social media account? Okay, so I would, I would really try, and of course that may um, reduce the police’s workload quite considerably. With regards to the mental health crisis that there is, um, I would need to be sitting down again with government and possibly never, ever, ever to the detriment of anybody in a mental health crisis, never, of course, because that’s what the police do.

53:41 When you need them they’re there, but I would really make some very serious noises about whose responsibility is this exactly, and why can’t social workers and mental health professionals, many of whom I know and think the world of, but why shouldn’t they be providing a 24/7 response? Okay, say, we can’t get you the legalization of drugs in the next few years. What would you do to reduce crime? Which type of crime? You know, it’s a multi-faceted thing.

54:15 Okay, about real-life crime, multifaceted thing, again, and I make no apology for coming back to this word, austerity. The youth clubs, their budgets have been butchered and many of them have disappeared. It’s about engaging with youth, but of course it is multi-complex. We come back to the poverty, social deprivation, exclusion from school. Goodness me, if you exclude a young person from school, who’s hovering around the school gates like vultures waiting to feed on the corpses, the drug dealers, and so the kids get ensnared into that.

54:59 I understand. You know, some kids can’t be in school, but we have to do so much to try and stop young people being excluded right from school, and give them other economic opportunities and other job opportunities, and mentoring, and all of that, you know, opportunity. And I know, you know, we’re in the middle of a coronavirus crisis, you know, and then the financial implications of that, and I know that money is finite, but you know, we need to find ways of looking after our young people, because at the end of the day, how is a society judged?

55:44 A society is judged, in my opinion, by how we treat our vulnerable, whether they be young, old, have disabilities, in whatever guise. That is surely how the soul of a nation is judged, and we need to make sure that young children don’t become vulnerable and fall prey to crime, criminality and villains. Yeah. And proper education. I remember I read a study that went through a project in Chicago, and it actually looked at the economics of being a drug dealer, or a runner for a drug dealer, and they backed out all the easy money that you made, and they realized you made less than minimum wage, less than working at McDonald’s, and then of course you probably were going to die in six years and be in prison in three years.

56:30 But actually, the economics weren’t there. They sold you a dream of this life, but it wasn’t actually there. Then if you could sit down with a young person and say, you know what, why would you want to do this? “Oh, it’s easy money. I get respect.”

56:41 Well, guess what? It’s not. And guess what? If you got a degree into this, if you had this opportunity and you stayed in school, in the long run you’re going to live longer, make more money and do all these things. Um, I’m just saying that could be a component, the end game that you can say to a young person without fear of contradiction: if they want to become a drug dealer, it’s death or jail or both.

57:08 Those are your options. It’s inevitable. You may have lucrative weeks and months and years, but eventually eventually you will fail. Yeah, crime doesn’t pay, and there’s plenty of autobiographies out there of former criminals that will tell you that. And what they did is they found what they call a legit hustle.

57:29 So they found a hustle that was acting, writing books, some enterprise, something, when they said, I can use all of my brain power. I used as a gangster and do this legit, and not go to jail, not hurt people, and not get killed. So many of the people when I was working undercover that I spent a lot of time with, you know, I would be sitting there, maybe having a laugh with them, a joke with them, not always, because some of them were, you know, particularly vicious and violent and unwell, and had a nine mil down the back of their trousers, but many that I met with, I would sit there, have a very business-like relationship with, which then would branch into a bit of fun when we talked the business out.

58:10 And I would be standing or sitting there in front of them and thinking to myself, while I’m portraying the gangster, I’m thinking, if only you’d gone down a different path. You’re bright, you’re funny, you’ve got it all. Yeah, you could have been anything you wanted, but you didn’t have the opportunities, or you got mixed up with the wrong crowd, and then once you get into that life it’s probably very hard to get out, or you made the wrong choices. Some people, you know, not every drug dealer I met and dealt with and brought about their downfall came from the tough side of the street.

58:44 Some just made very bad choices. Okay. And I want to hear about some of your time undercover. I’m just almost done with my quiz show about police and police reform, because I’m fascinated by this subject. Stop and frisk.

58:56 It’s very controversial. It was controversial in New York City, it’s controversial in London. How do you feel about stop and frisk? Because, you know, minority communities say it unfairly targets us, and we’re tired of being harassed, and yet the police will say it stops crime. What do we do?

59:12 Stop and search is a really, really important tool for the police, vitally important, really important. I can guarantee that whilst we’ve been sat here, somewhere in the UK somebody has been stopped and searched and found in possession of a weapon or drugs, or some item to be used in crime or criminality, that will undoubtedly have happened just while we’ve been sitting here. It’s a vital, vital tool, but it needs to be done as much as it can be courteously.

59:53 It needs to be explained and it needs to be justified, and when it’s not, that’s when there’s problems. Yes, the stats bear out that certain minority communities are stopped more than white people. Again, if you go behind the stats and really explore them, is there unconscious bias coming into play? Possibly, but a lot of the time, if a task force is deployed to an area where there has been a spike in stabbings and loss of life, and that area happens to be populated by a particular minority community, then of course people from that community will be more likely to stop and search, be stopped and searched, because the task force is there at that time.

1:00:49 But yeah, courteously it needs to be justified, um, and and unexplained. And when that happens it can so often leave people with a much better experience. Sometimes, sometimes, of course, I don’t think I’m being naive here, because I’ve been there. Sometimes you don’t have time to explain or be courteous, and you have to slam that person up against the wall or on the pavement and handcuff them and robustly search them to get that weapon. You know, that does happen.

1:01:27 Let’s not be naive about this. Policing is a difficult, difficult job. Um, but yeah, I would address that, but can I do that on day two or three, because I had so much to do on day one? We’ve got a lot of work to do, Peter. Um, and what about the use of body cam footage?

1:01:45 There’s this new app that they said that people can download that will record their interactions with the police into the cloud. Do you think that can help? Or does that also create a bunch of problems with reviewing that footage, that being public? That’s a great idea. Okay, that’s a great idea.

1:02:00 Please, please, officers, you know, wear those body cams. The camera never lies, generally speaking. But the police have haven’t dealt with this brilliantly well in recent years, because what’s happened is the police have not enjoyed being filmed. So they go to an incident, they’re doing their job, and the public pulls out their phone and starts filming them, right? Well, they’ve got to lose that.

1:02:30 They’ve got to completely and utterly lose that, because you see, they can’t have it both ways. There was a dreadful murder a few days ago of two women, and the police are asking the public for their dashcam images, and then you get another crime and the police are asking for people’s CCTV images. You can’t have it either way, police, you know, and you’ve got to understand this, but it’s got to come from the leaders on high. Okay, don’t go telling members of the public, in a heated moment, don’t film, because they’re not doing it.

1:03:09 All right? If it was me, and I got there and there’s a police officer struggling on the ground with a suspect, I’m not going to get my phone out and film them, because I’m an ex-cop. What am I going to do? I’m going to go, ex-cop, I’m helping you, boom, right? And I’ll help that struggling police, obviously.

1:03:26 Other people, understandably, in some cases will film it, then they’ll edit it to their convenience so that when they see the police officer putting the person on the ground, that’s all you’ll see, and then some clown will go on social media and say, another example of police brutality. There’s no context. You don’t see the beginning, you don’t see the end. You get that snapshot, people start piling in and criticizing the police and the officers, and then they might get investigated.

1:04:01 No. Have your body-worn videos, wear them all the time, you know, endlessly, and senior police officers stand up for the rank and file, stand up for him when something like that happens. Grow a pair, stand up and say, this clip is completely taken out of context. Here is the full footage. Yeah, Beckham, support him, lead him.

1:04:34 Not much of that going on these days. Should the public be encouraged to record their interactions as well, and have that app, and have their own versions? Yes. Would that help? Yeah.

1:04:44 Nothing hard, right? What have the cops got to hide? Yeah, you know, they can’t be asking for dashcams and CCTV on one hand and then saying don’t film us on the other, that it’s just a contradiction that makes no sense to anyone, right? So they’re all in or all out. Yeah.

1:05:00 The new reality is people are going to film you everywhere. You should assume you’re being filmed anyway, so just use it as a chance to do your job even better. And to know that you’re being watched. Yeah, okay. Um, that takes leadership.

1:05:12 That takes getting officers up the curve on that, for sure. And it takes, it means they’re being backed, and we’ve seen instances in the States where the chiefs have backed the police officer and said no, that’s not what happened, this is the footage, and they’ve released it very quickly in order to calm the public down so it doesn’t lead to riots. And then we’ve seen the opposite in the States as well, where, you know, the officers vilified out of context, uh, as well.

1:05:34 You’re a master of understanding the digital element of policing. I mean, you know, the six series on Hunted, I mean, you’re, you’re the guy in the control, you, you’re the chief that’s watching everything going on. How much could technology and the digital side help our police officers do a better job, or do a less invasive job, to our communities in your mind, or are we already doing that? It has transformed policing in many regards. You know, I’m old enough to remember when CCTV was in its relative infancy, and everybody thought, or many people thought, this is really going to stop crime, because people will look up, see the camera and walk away and not commit that crime.

1:06:19 Well, of course it hasn’t panned out like that. What CCTV invariably has become is an evidence-gathering tool, as opposed to a crime prevention thing, but you know, people didn’t know that at the time, and of course in the age now with the desktop order or the digital detective technology is running ahead at full speed, of course, and is becoming a mighty powerful tool for the police in many regards, but the police is a public service, so it’s always behind the private sector. And they have been notoriously bad at commissioning things when it comes to IT over the years, because some swanky unscrupulous person from an IT company might sit in front of a senior police officer and metaphorically take their trousers down, in other words, pull the wool over their eyes, or over-promise and under-deliver, whilst over-charging.

1:07:26 The police have been notoriously bad at commissioning proper, fit-for-purpose IT, and it comes as no surprise, because you’ve got police officers doing it. You should have IT experts doing it. Um, but yeah, IT is, it is vital. Forensic science, of course, has been so helpful to the police. Back in my day there was whoops of delight if we got a fingerprint.

1:07:57 Now, of course, you’ve got DNA, and forensic science in all its guises has leapt on unrecognizably, and all those things are wonderful for the benefit of the police, searching for the truth and ultimately justice. But yeah, they’re a public service, so they’re a bit behind a curveball, I think. They need to get some really, really sharp brains on it with regards to all their IT. And I think there’s some really, you know, well-meaning good-spirited people who are in the private sector that might give up a Saturday morning to go and have a chat with a cop and say, actually, you know, you need to be looking for this, this, this, this and this, and I’ll see you next Saturday after you’ve had your meeting with them.

1:08:45 There’s a lot, there’s a lot of goodwill towards the police out there, and I know people that work in IT in senior positions in, in banking and the like, and I’m sure they’d pop along on a Saturday morning and spare a few hours to help give the police a proper steer. Okay, all right, that’s super helpful. And then finally, you ultimately need more officers regardless. I know you’ve lost the brain drain, but you still need another 10 or 20 thousand officers easily.

1:09:09 Oh, more, double that, double that, because for the police you’ve got to remember that officers are retiring all the time. Well, nationwide, you know, you’ve got to remember that officers are retiring all the time, and officers get, uh, medically retired as well as as coming to the end of their service, and officers are disillusioned and officers going back to that one who’s been offered, you know, double your salary Monday or Friday, and said, because they’ve got a valuable, um, qualification that has a real value for it out in the, uh, in the private sector. So yeah, they need tens upon tens of thousands, far more than Boris Johnson’s headline-grabbing 20,000.

1:09:45 Okay. This hasn’t happened here yet, but in America we’re seeing calls to defund the police, and we’re seeing officers vilified in the media, and it’s going to come to a point where you can’t recruit anyone there, and you might not even be able to pay them. Now, we had a spike of this over here, but it’s kind of calmed down, but you know, like you said, what happens in America oftentimes finds its way over here in five years. Um, is that something we need to be concerned about?

1:10:12 And regardless, how would you advise the states to deal with this issue? The United States. Um, well, of course, I think there’s something like 17 000 different law enforcement agencies in the States, and that’s simply too many. You’ve got conflicting working practices, conflicting objectives, ideals and all of that. You need some kind of uniformity, and you probably need better training, and you probably need to offer a better salary, because with a better salary, there, I say, you will recruit a better calibre of officer.

1:11:06 Anybody who thinks that kneeling on somebody’s neck for nearly nine minutes is remotely acceptable, and not dangerous and potentially life-threatening, is a numbskull. End of story. I make no judgment on the guilt or otherwise. I shall leave that for the courts of law to decide, but if you do something like that, you are a numbskull. People tragically in the police have died in custody because they have been held face down and they have asphyxiated.

1:11:45 You know, the overwhelming majority of cops in the UK are on red alert when they’ve got anybody face down. You know, are they turning their head to the side? Are they breathing? Some people you have to detain face down because they are so violent that they will kill you if they get half a chance, as exhibited tragically only a week ago when Sergeant Matt Ratner was shot and killed in a detention suite in London. Rest in peace, Sarge.

1:12:18 You know, it’s a dangerous job, and sometimes there is no place for niceties whatsoever. People have to be forcibly restrained, detained, but you know, cops over here are much more aware on that. We’ve got 43 police forces. I think that’s too many. You’ve got 17,000 law enforcement agencies.

1:12:45 Well, it’s pretty obvious, and a lack of training as well. Do we suffer from that here? I mean, I think in America, you know, they’re given basic physical combat training, like two hours once when they start, and then there’s no follow-up training, there’s nothing when it comes to actually dealing physically with suspects. I don’t know what it’s like here, but do we need more training? You can’t have enough training.

1:13:07 Trouble is, with budgets cut and all of that kind of stuff, you know, the actual police constables course. So the first one that you go on, you know, in my day used to be 16 weeks residential, and you had a great and thorough understanding of the law. That shrunk hugely now, and it’s not residential, you know. So all that training is, you know, training saved my life on a number of occasions. Training is vital, and I know it’s yet again been stripped and stripped and stripped.

1:13:42 You reap what you sow. Training’s really vitally important, because it just becomes habit-forming. If you are well-drilled, well-trained, well-practiced and well-versed, it’s habit-forming, and good habits are good to have. Of course, what was the training that saved you? Well, Uh, firearms training, particularly.

1:14:08 I, um, back in the day there wasn’t many of us that were armed, but I could see through experiences that I’d had that firearm numbers were increasing. My attitude was, well, if they’re gonna have one, I want one, although I did go home and spend a very long weekend contemplating whether I wanted the responsibility of taking another person’s life, and I thought about it endlessly, and I talked it through with some people, and, but essentially it was my decision. I could take all the advice from everybody else, but it had to be my decision, and it wasn’t one that I took lightly.

1:14:47 Do I want to have the capacity for taking another human being’s life? And then I went, yeah, I think I need to, because I had situations you know, where we discovered firearms and the like. So I went, did my firearms training, threw myself into it. It was brilliant, it was absolutely brilliant. You did it, the load and reload, and you did it again, and you did it again, and you shot and shot and shot and shot and shot, and then you ran around and ran around and climbed over things and went under things, and so it was gruelling, both mentally and physically, and you trained and trained and trained and trained and trained, and at the end of the two weeks, I think it was, you know, you had your final shoot, and you had to hit the right mark to get your pink ticket and carry your gun, and then you went back to your refresher training so often, and you would never be able to get away with this now.

1:15:42 But I’ll tell you what I did the night before I went firearms training. I always had a few drinks and a very late night, and I deliberately sleep-deprived myself, so the following morning when I went to firearms training, I essentially, you know, had not had enough quality sleep. I was knackered, tired, I’d been drinking the night before, and I did it because I was thinking that was my own internal prep, so that, because I, I don’t know that I’m going to feel chirpy and chipper and I’ve had a good night’s sleep whenever I get given a gun in my hand, because the situations arise, so I deliberately made life difficult for myself where I went on that train, because I think if I could do it under those circumstances, you know, if I, I’m sure you couldn’t do that now, because you probably get breathalyzed before you go firearms training.

1:16:34 You probably get drug swiped, and all of that, but you know, you could still do it on very little sleep, couldn’t you? You know, you could, you could factor that into your training just so you’re bringing a bit of interior pressure on yourself. Um, anyway, one morning I’m at Kensington, I’m a detective in the CID office. A mate of mine, I overhear a telephone call, and this detective was all right but a bit less experienced than me, and I, and I, and I, and I heard firearms and murderer and escape and all these words being mentioned, so I kind of took pretty close attention, and when the phone call ended, I went, okay, mate, what’s all that about?

1:17:18 I’ll try and shrink this story. A man called James Alexander Bakery had been convicted of murder in Scotland. What he’d done during a robbery, he’d put a shotgun into a publican’s back and pulled both barrels, and essentially nearly cut this poor man in half, killed him. Of course, Bakery was arrested, convicted of murder, and sent to a high security prison. He had committed a very audacious escape from the prison.

1:17:45 He broke his own arm so he could have a cast put on it, and he could use the cars to break windows and all kinds of stuff, scaled to roofs, blah blah blah. He was Scotland’s most wanted man. The Scotland police had searched the home address of his best friend, and they’d ripped the place asunder, you know, wallpaper off the walls, floorboards up, everything, the lot, and they’d found nothing except for one small scrap of paper which had a London telephone number on it.

1:18:18 They’d done a subscriber check on that number, and it came to an address on our patch in Kensington. It was a large old sort of Victorian house, I think, set across about four or five floors, which was now divided into flats bedsits, um, so they’d ask my colleague, you know, can you go and check this address out? He made some inquiries. Essentially it was agreed the following day uh, the, the bedsit that we thought this man might sleep in, we’d identified.

1:18:51 So me and her colleague both booked out guns first thing the following morning. We went up. I kicked the door in, straight into this twin-bedded room. One bed is empty, one bed has got someone sleeping in it, so I’m there pointing my gun at him, you know, get out, comply, do what you’re told, my fingers on the trigger. I’m perfectly prepared for any non-compliance here.

1:19:16 Um, he told us that the guy who slept in the other bed had gone out with some friends the night before. He was a lovely guy. Um, and just, you know, gave no indicator that he was a wanted escaped murderer. There was a picture on the piece. I looked at this picture, and we had a picture for his mugshot from when Bakery had been arrested, and we tried to compare it with this picture.

1:19:45 And we, we, we weren’t sure. You know, you couldn’t be sure, and that so often, often happens with photographs. So anyway, when the kid from the other bed wasn’t looking, I pocketed that photograph. It shows how long ago it was. I was going to get that photograph to Heathrow Airport, have it flown up to Scotland on the first flight, and then be able to say whether it was him or not.

1:20:09 Right, before technology. But um, anyway, so we did what we had to do there, left that room, went outside, having the big major conversation of the morning, where are we going to go and get breakfast? And there was something in my mind. I’d heard that the guy in the room that might be Bakery worked as a builder. I think the, the kid from the other bed had said he was, he worked as a builder or something, so whilst my colleagues are talking about which cafe to go to for breakfast, I’m scanning up and down the road.

1:20:47 I was always a very, very nosy kind of detective, and I see what looks like a builder’s van, so I go, right, let’s go and have a nose around. That my other colleague with the other gun has disappeared off for breakfast with half of the team as well, so there’s me and three or four others. And I look through the front windscreen of this van, you know, check its tax disc. We used to have tax discs in those days. Have a nose around, see what I can see.

1:21:15 There’s a partition behind the driver and the passenger seat, which separates off the back of the van, it’s got a bit of a window in it, but I can’t really see very much. I go around to the back of the van and stick my hand on the door handle, as you do, and to my surprise it opened. So of course, never look a gift horse in the mouth. I open the door and I clamber in the van, and I’m literally in, getting in the van, when suddenly a head pops up from beneath a blanket.

1:21:51 Right, instantly, training. Right, I knew we’d get back to training at some point. Training kicks in. My hand goes inside my jacket to try and get my gun out of my shoulder holster, but instantaneously I went, good morning, I’m an armed police officer. The first thing I said, just training, training, training, drilled into you.

1:22:14 And as I’m clumsily trying to get my gun out, the next thing he’s gone, like that, and that far away from my nose is a sawn-off double-barrelled, up and over shotgun. Well, I gave up my efforts to try and get my gun, because clearly he was quicker on the draw than I was, so in the finest traditions of the Metropolitan Police, I legged it, right, shouting to my colleagues, who was still having a chat about which cafe we’re going to. He’s got a gun, right, rather louder or with a bit more urgency and energy than that.

1:22:54 I hated the way they clearly knew I wasn’t joking, because I’ve gone off down the road like a long dog, right, dived under a car about four or five cars away, got my gun out, excuse me, and of course I’m thinking he’s gonna come out any moment, all guns blazing, you know, and it’s now it’s about half six, maybe seven o’clock, so the neighbourhood is beginning to wake up. You know, people are coming out of their houses going to work. I now know clearly this is the escaped murderer with a double-barrelled shotgun in his hands.

1:23:31 This is a very tense situation, and it’s only me with my Smith and Wesson revolver. Right, that’s how long ago it was, mid-80s. It’s really not a good situation, but once again, to shrink that story, um, I just shouted at him, you are surrounded by armed police, come out, lay your weapon down, come out with your hands up. I was just bullshitting him, you know. He wasn’t surrounded by our police.

1:23:57 It was me and my Smith and Wesson, and that was it, but you know, sometimes you just chance your arm, and I clearly sounded that authoritative that he thought, oh yeah, I am. Um, and he stayed in that van for 36 hours. There was a big siege, most of West London ground to a halt because of road closures and all of that. It was a lead story on the news. And 36 hours later he decided that, rather than go back to, uh, a life in prison, he would take his own life.

1:24:30 So he put the shotgun to his head, and that was the end of him. Wow, why didn’t he shoot you? Um, it’s a really good question. In fact, when they found the gun after he’d killed himself, they, um, there was one senior detective, and I didn’t buy this story at all, but they examined it, and the firing pin had hit one cartridge and not gone off. Right, so in fact, only one.

1:24:58 Did you know firearms do malfunction from time to time? And this detective said, I wonder if he pulled that trigger you know, when it was pointing at you. But I didn’t buy that, because he had a day and a half or two days, so he would have reloaded, you know, he had other ammunition and all that kind of stuff, so that didn’t really stack up in my books. Um, I don’t know, but I was just, you know, I was there momentarily, and, and maybe again, you see, because I told him I was a cop, maybe, I don’t know, maybe, but it was that training that I’m convinced probably saved my life.

1:25:40 Do my police need guns in London? No, no, there’s more armed police out there than you would imagine. Okay, there’s lots of armed response vehicles driving around with plenty of firepower. Um, we don’t need every police officer to be armed. We simply don’t need that, and you would lose police officers in their droves if they were all forced to carry a gun.

1:26:05 Tragedies do happen, sadly, when both the police and public lose their lives, but we are some considerable way away from a fully armed police service. Do we need more officers carrying a Taser? Sadly, yes. Is that the thin end of the wedge, part of the slippery slope towards a fully armed police service? I hope not, but I understand the arguments from people that think it is okay.

1:26:35 Okay. I appreciate you answering all these questions on the police force. Any final thoughts on the police force before I get into your story, the book and the man you’re hunting? Yeah, they’re heroes. Support them, and if you fancy doing it for a job, as long as you follow the C word, which is commitment, and you are committed every day to every task, you’ll have a remarkable career that you’ll look back on with great, great pride.

1:27:02 In America they have ride-alongs, where you can sit in the back of a car for 24 hours or for one shift, and go with the police, and it’s incredible experience to see how difficult that job is, and to really get a feel for, what it’s like to be a police officer. Do we need to do that equivalent here in London? One question, my second question, is, you know, I like questions. Is do we need to teach people how to get detained by police officers? Teach people how to get arrested.

1:27:27 You know, teach people that when the officer says this, you do this, and that way it doesn’t lead to shootings and violence. Maybe that’s more from my American listeners. I think maybe parents should teach their children that, you know what I mean, if you get stopped by the police, do as you’re told, and as long as you’ve got nothing to hide, in all likelihood it will end well, but if you’re going to be stroppy, if you’re going to be argumentative, if you’re going to pick a fight, then of course it will be a bad experience.

1:28:00 They’ve got enough on their plate. It’s a difficult enough job as it is. Don’t make it any more difficult for them, because you know, in your life one day something bad is going to happen to you, and who are you going to call? Not Ghostbusters, the police. Yeah.

1:28:20 Should we do a ride-along equivalent in the UK, where people can spend a day with the police and get to know what that job is like? And I fear there’s probably some insurance issue that might get in the way. I don’t know. I’ll do that on day four of being in charge, if I might. That seems like a good idea.

1:28:35 It also might get the public on their side to understand that that’s a difficult job, and they’re just trying to do their best. And like you said, you will need the police at some point. So yeah. Um, look, we could probably speak for 10 hours with the life you’ve had, Peter, and your undercover work, and all of your experience, you know, with some crazy people and gangsters. But also that work allows you to do the work you do now, which is this manhunt, if you call it that, which is, you know, we’ve spent the last few years of your life looking for this particular gentleman.

1:29:05 Maybe you can tell us why has this become such a priority obsession of yours, and why did those many years undercover, how did that really arm you with all this knowledge to do the detective work? Let me please correct you on one thing from what I’ve heard, and what I’ve been told about Kevin Parle. He is not a gentleman. I have interviewed former girlfriends of his, and he had a very controlling, violent, coercive way towards them. On one hand, in company, in a restaurant, he would be charm personified, and I’ve been told that his ability to chat up women was absolutely legendary, but some incredibly courageous women have come forward and spoken to me and given me their testimonies, and they say that in the sanctity of a space where it was just him and her, he was revolting.

1:30:20 So anyway, I got medically retired from the cops after 21 years. I didn’t do my full 30 because I had to live in witness protection program. I had a full, you know, catastrophic mental health breakdown, and I think it’s fair to say that I’m probably still a frustrated public servant. I’ve been out the cops for 20 years, but I’ve, and I’ve worked in the private sector, and of course the public sector, and I think part of me is still a frustrated detective who wants to do his bit for society, because I think I might have sort of been shortchanged by not doing the last nine years, and I might have shortchanged the public by not giving them those nine years of my life.

1:31:11 So that is why I decided last year, after I left a TV show, a successful TV show on Channel 4 in the UK called Hunted, I’d been the chief for six series, as you said. When I left that show, I was thinking, what’s my next major project going to be? And my publisher had said I could do another book if I got the right subject material. So I thought, okay, much as I’ve written plays for Radio 4, you know, drama plays, Radio 4. Been a veteran of thousands of broadcasts about crime and policing and all of that, and written books, of course, what I am best known for is hunting pretend fugitives on a television entertainment show.

1:32:01 Right, well, get over it, Bleksley, and just accept that and use it to your own advantage. So I thought, right, I’ll combine what I’m best known for, my skills, my experience, the network of people that I’ve got, roll it all into one and instead of writing books on unsolved murders, like my previous two were, and instead of hunting pretend fugitives on a TV show, I’ll go for a real one, and they do not come any more wanted than Kevin Parle. He’s wanted for two separate murders, now, he’s not convicted.

1:32:40 So I need to make that clear, but he is very much wanted, and he’s on the National Crime Agency’s most wanted list. And if you’ll excuse me, I’ll show you a picture of him. All right. So 18 months ago my publisher said, yep, you can write a book on hunting Kevin Parle, and it had the working title of “I’m Coming For You.” It is of course now called Manhunt.

1:33:09 So, 29th of April 2019, I held a press conference in central London, you know, building on my ZED list, very minor celebrity status. Fortunately, you know, some big hitters turned up. Danny Shaw, Home Affairs correspondent from the BBC, was there. The Press Association were there. A daily newspaper was there, and others.

1:33:33 It was quite a good turnout. And I told everybody, I announced that I’m gonna go and look for Kevin Parle. I had these printed up, hundreds of them, right, and on the back are the pictures of the two victims. Liam Kelly, 16 years old, right, shot dead in 2004. 16 years old, a boy, a kid.

1:33:59 Now, of course, I’ve been researching these crimes and hunting Kevin Parle for 18 months, so I’ve spoken to a vast array of people, and it’s fair to say nobody has described Liam to me as being a model student. Let me put it that way, but you know what? When I was 16, I was a blooming nuisance and irritated a lot of people. Liam was denied the opportunity to grow, to mature, to enter manhood, to meet a partner, to have a family, to provide for, all denied him, because he was lured to a straightener in the early hours of the morning and shot dead.

1:34:46 And a court has been told, because three people have been convicted of offenses in connection with Liam’s murder. The court was told, albeit, let me just remind everybody, he is currently unconvicted. Court was told Kevin Parle pulled the trigger. That’s why he’s wanted for Liam’s murder. What’s a straightener?

1:35:05 Ah, it’s a, it’s a term used in criminal circles when perhaps you and I have a bit of a disagreement, and we might get things straight, okay? Or alternatively it’s a situation whereby we’re going to get things straight, but it ain’t going to end well, if you know what I mean. Got it. Um, the second victim. Fast forward to August 2005, Lucy Hargreaves, a 22-year-old mother of three young children, shot dead on her sofa in her own home in a bungled, amateurish, pathetic attack upon her home.

1:35:53 It’s a very well-known theory that the intended victim was Lucy’s partner. Lucy’s partner, Gary Campbell, had been the passenger in a stolen car 12 years earlier that had been involved in an accident and killed a four-year-old boy. Either way, Lucy, as I say, was described to me as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside, an entirely innocent, unconnected, wonderful young woman, shot dead, and then her body and our home was set on fire by a bunch, I better just temper my language.

1:36:33 I’ll let people make their own decisions on that. Nobody has been convicted in relation to Lucy’s crime. Two men stood trial. The case was haunted by the judge at half, halfway through, because he said the prosecution case wasn’t strong enough, so the Jury were directed to return not guilty verdicts. Kevin Parle, very much wanted for that crime as well.

1:36:58 So yeah, had all these printed up. I’ve handed out literally hundreds of them in Liverpool that I’ve been to many, many times. 15 months. Yep, he’s from Liverpool. Both these crimes were committed in Liverpool.

1:37:11 Kevin Parle does not come from the tough side of the street. He came from the south side of the city, privately educated. Um, and I’m told when he started to move in criminal circles, because he’s six foot six and he’s big and he’s broad, and all of that, that wasn’t enough. He felt he had to prove himself, and to start with, the seniors in the criminal world would only let him handle a bunch of kids and run a bunch of kids, because they didn’t really trust him.

1:37:41 Variously described to me as a clown by somebody who knew him in his younger years, described to me as the designated driver for a bunch of football hooligans. And I’m told one story: when Liverpool football club hooligans, who were called the Urchins, were going to a game away to Leicester City, they stopped at a motorway service station. Parle decided to impress all these youngsters by stealing a pizza, crime of the century, which he took outside of the motor services, and then he got stopped by security and was humiliated because he had to pay for it.

1:38:19 Not exactly Al Bloody Capone was he, but clearly, and I know an awful lot about alleged criminality that he was involved in, the circles he moved in. Um, he has now wanted for these two ghastly, ghastly murders. So not long after I’d started my hunt for him, I was very fortunate. Why did you choose him? There were probably ten other men that you could be hunting for.

1:38:49 Why him? Nobody else in the UK is wanted for two separate murders. And those crimes speak for themselves. They’re ghastly, you know. And this isn’t about Kevin Parle, and it most definitely is not about me.

1:39:02 This is about Liam and Lucy. This is about right over wrong. This is about truth over lies. This is about having a sense of, or not having a sense of. This is about justice, and seeing a man who is wanted for both those crimes standing in a court and answering the accusations that are made against him, and then let justice run its course.

1:39:27 There has to be a sense of justice. Any injustice that I feel is dwarfed. It’s pathetic. It doesn’t come anywhere near the pain and the suffering and the hurt that I should imagine Liam and Lucy’s families and loved ones have been through. Who needs to be found?

1:39:43 Where is he? Well, I can’t tell you that now, because of course it’s without a doubt one of Kevin Parle’s associates, if not Kevin Parle himself, will be watching this, and I’m not gonna tip them or him the wink. He’s very much alive. Don’t believe the urban myths that he’s dead and his fish food and all that nonsense. He’s very much alive, and he is going to be found.

1:40:16 He is going to be found. Now, not long after um, I’d started my hunt for him, very fortunately and thankfully, the BBC commissioned a podcast series on my hunt for him, and that is still there on BBC Sounds. It’s called Manhunt: Finding Kevin Parle. There’s 12 episodes up there. The BBC have commissioned another six episodes, but because I can’t put into the public domain what I know at the moment, you won’t be hearing any of those episodes just now, but as soon as we can get them out there, we will.

1:40:52 Then, of course, only recently, um, my book was published. Now, let me just tell you, and I make no apologies for the plug. Okay, this book is a very different vehicle from the podcast. Listen, the podcast, read the book, please. If you look at the incredibly generous reviews that people have put on Amazon, Waterstones, the works, and all those kind of places where you can buy it, if you look at the reviews, they are, well, I’m flabbergasted by them.

1:41:27 They’re terrific, but people, fans of the podcast, have said, oh, shall I buy the book? You know, I’ve listened to the podcast, and they’ve kindly written reviews and said, “Separate things, got an awful lot out of it.” You know, you need to do both. Um, so please, this is not about profit. This is not about putting money in my pocket, because I very much doubt that it will ever sell in sufficient numbers for me to get a royalty check.

1:41:55 This is about pal, not profit. The more copies this book sells, the more likely it is that my publisher will get into profit, and if my publisher gets into profit, what will they then do? Hopefully give me a contract to write, perhaps, the book about how we actually caught him. You know, but that’s some way off. So please read this, help me out, get me some funds to continue my hunt.

1:42:27 It’s all in there: how much I’ve been paid, how much I’ve spent. I have not put one carrot on my family’s dining table out of everything I’ve done in my hunt for Parle. How do you hunt this man digitally? Shoe leather, and how do you do it when you’re not a police officer? Well, of course you’ve nailed it.

1:42:44 I’m an old shoe leather detective, aren’t I? You know, I come from that generation. We had no computers back in the day. He did your detective work on me. Yeah, yeah, of course.

1:42:54 Due diligence will call it, shall we? Yeah. So, um, yeah, I, but I have taught myself to become a digital detective. Um, I have an open source expert, um, who’s a specialist in his field, and I have others who help me from time to time when I call upon them. Geographic, I’ve got one of the world’s best geographical analysts working for me as well.

1:43:21 So I’ve got a small and select team of people that helped me out, but of course they’re volunteers, and volunteering only goes so much, you know, if they’ve got paid work and their family, that’s going to come in front of me ringing them up or emailing them and saying, please can you have a look at this, can you give me a bit of help here, and all of that. But that’s wonderful. Overwhelmingly the help has come from the great public, the public who’ve listened to the podcast, who have seen some of the, the media, you know, the, the articles and the radio interviews I’ve given.

1:43:58 Two and a half million people have listened to the podcast, or it’s had two and a half million downloads, I should say, across the 12 episodes, and people are reading the book. I always hoped that the book would be yet another tool that might tempt people to come forward and speak to me, because they’ll read it, because you know what, that people, yeah, he’s alright, I’m going to tell him what I know, and, and people are, and they do. In fact, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got a story that I’ve only just been made privy to.

1:44:29 Right, it’s a, it’s a historical one about Kevin Parle, and I can’t tell whether it’s true or not, but this gives you an insight into the man, either way. We know, and he’s been out there, that he had a video on his phone of his dog attacking and dismembering sheep, which he found funny. Right? He thinks that kind of stuff is funny. Right?

1:44:55 Well, I and many thousands of people don’t. Right, got told another story. He and some associates went to Knowsley Safari Park. Right, one of a few safari parks in the UK. Knowsley is up in Merseyside near Liverpool, and we’re talking about, around about 2004, the year that Liam got shot.

1:45:21 This is the story as it was told to my source. Parle and his mates stole a baby baboon from this safari park, much to the annoyance of a very, very distressed mother of the baby baboon. They wrapped it in a blanket, hid it in the back of the car, and later sold it for 3,000 pounds. Now, if it’s true, then I don’t need to add anything to that story, because it tells you everything you need to know about Kevin Parle and his associates. Nothing I could add.

1:46:07 If it’s made up and it was just a boast, that he was trying to tell people, you know, to try and gain some kind of kudos, well, once again, I don’t need to add very much to it, do I, because it gives you the mark of the man. Needs to be found. He will be found, undoubtedly, because even when there’s no more podcasts commissioned, even when there’s no more book contracts, even when people are sick and tired of me talking about Kevin Parle, I’ll still be hunting him if he hasn’t already been captured.

1:46:52 Are you in fear for your life? And you’ve gotten a lot of hate on social media for this? I’ve lived in the witness protection program. All right. I’ve been threatened by professionals.

1:47:02 I lived in fear of the assassin’s bullet in the back of my head every day. I lived in fear of that explosive device under my car, which is why I checked it every day for two years in those miserable miserable times in the witness protection program, and through a combination of factors I worried myself to a catastrophic mental health breakdown. My mental health these days is robust. I’m very well. I take great care of it.

1:47:32 It’s something I treasure. Um, yeah, I’ve been abused and insulted, and there’s been pictures of my house posted on social media, on one occasion with a correct description of the bedroom that I sleep in. Why are they doing that? Right, if Parle was dead, like some fools would have you believe, because he’s not, trust me, he is not. Let me just dispel any of that urban mythology, right?

1:48:04 But just in case you need to add any weight to it, why would they be doing that? Because they’ve got his best interests at heart, because they want to throw me off the trail, because they want to frighten me, they want to intimidate me, they want me to stop what I’m doing. And why? Not only for Parle’s benefit, but of course, let’s think about it here. He is harboured and funded by serious organized crime.

1:48:35 Is he living in some gated mansion in Argentina? No, right, because he’d be too noticeable. Is he living a relatively modest lifestyle, whereby he fulfils a purpose for organized crime, because he’s six foot six, broadly built, still athletic, so he’s looking after himself, as I’m told? Yes, he’s an asset to those criminals. But bit by bit, podcast episode by podcast episode, book by book, media appearance by media appearance, and thank you, and everybody involved, I’m shrinking the world for Kevin Parle, and I’m gonna tighten and screw that globe so tightly that eventually his six foot six head pops up, and law enforcement slap the handcuffs on, and then the criminal justice system can run its course, and we will see what the outcome is, because I’m not interested in those criminals and the crime that they’re committing, or bear let’s just say hypothetically that I knew everything they were up to.

1:50:09 Right, say I knew that, say I’d spent 18, 19, 20 months, however long, finding all that out. I knew what they were up to. I knew what commodities or crimes they were committing. I knew how it was funded, what routes they used, who did what, who was connected to what. Imagine if I knew all of that hypothetically speaking.

1:50:37 Of course I could go to law enforcement with that, couldn’t I? The National Crime Agency. But if those harboring and funding Kevin Parle want a deal, I’m really up for a deal, and that deal would be and him over, right, and him. I’m not saying frogmarch him into a blooming excuse me, police station, but you know, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, all right? Hand him over.

1:51:14 I’ll leave them to do it their way, right? Don’t kill him, right? Just hand him over, ensure that he is captured, manufacture a situation so that he is captured, and then if you do that, I give you a solemn undertaking that the secrets that I know, because I might know hypothetically about all your secrets, I guarantee those secrets will stay in there until I gasp my last, so you can carry on with your hypothetically very lucrative criminality, with none of it being disturbed, with none of it being discovered by law enforcement, with it remaining as successful into the future as perhaps hypothetically it has been.

1:52:12 It’s a good deal. It’s a very good deal. It’s a very good deal. And you know, with social media getting bigger and bigger, and us being more and more connected, I mean, a guy like this with that description, it’s only a matter of time. I mean, they found Whitey Bulger, for God’s sake, in LA.

1:52:28 A guy they never thought they would find, you know, a guy of that description. If he said, if he’s in public at all, and like you said, he probably has to be, to be an asset to them, if you keep doing what you’re doing, it is only a matter of time. Thank you. Yes, it is. Yeah, it is, it is.

1:52:46 Particularly when, um, shall we say, you know, we’re all travelling perhaps a bit more than we are today, you know? I think most of us are kind of like within a work commute, aren’t we, or a jaunt to whatever family member we’re allowed to see and support, and all that kind of stuff. I don’t think many of us are travelling very far, um, or expansively, um. It was 18 months ago, literally on the day of the press conference that I held in central London, me and my great friend and podcast editor travelled to Liverpool, uh, dumped our bags in a hotel.

1:53:25 Long day, you know, gasping for a drink. Um, near his pub, please. We asked the hotel receptionist, yeah, just up the road. We went into the pub. I’m always working, I’m always on duty really.

1:53:39 If you really, to be perfectly honest with you, you know, my uncle Paul never stops. It’s a seven-day-a-week commitment. Um, and I’m not complaining. I was a volunteer. It was all my idea, and I do get down time.

1:53:49 I do get time to, you know, kick back on the sofa, have a glass of red and watch the telly, you know. Um. We get into this pub, speak to the, the, the landlord, the publican, and tell him what I’m doing, said, if you’ve got any objection, if Mark goes one end of the bar, I go the other end of the bar, and in a pincer movement, we hand out all these flyers to your customers. Landlord, you know, really, what you’re doing, tell me all about it, I’m really interested.

1:54:18 Thank you. We did exactly that, and so many people were like, “Kevin who?” Never heard of him. Never heard of him. Now, courtesy of the podcast, the book, the publicity and thanks to yourselves, there are thousands upon thousands of people that want him caught.

1:54:42 It’s become a public interest issue. They really want him caught, and he will be. He will be. It’s no longer me, my pen, my notebook and my mobile phone, which it was for quite a while, and essentially that’s the core, but it’s no longer that. People contact me every day of the week, whether it’s a thought, a theory, something they want to highlight to me, and all of that, and I welcome all of that.

1:55:11 I spend loads of time connecting with people, you know, and I’m all across social media, you know, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. All is Peter Bleksley. Easily contactable, you know. Phone numbers are out there, email addresses are out there, website peterbleksley.com. I could not be more contactable, and people do, and I always take the time, even if it’s just a thought and a theory, and it’s not direct information or intelligence or evidence.

1:55:41 I still connect, and thank you, you know, and because I’m indebted to everybody and they do, and there is such a clear air of inevitability about all this. He will be found. I believe you. And that’s what happens when Peter Bleksley gets on your table. So what happens when you find him?

1:56:06 What will you do next? Well, he’s six foot six, twenty years younger than me and fit and athletic, so when it comes to a street fight there’ll only be one winner, and it wouldn’t be me. Right, law enforcement will have to do their thing, um, and there will, of course, be, uh, a process that will have to happen thereafter. I meant after all that’s done and he’s brought to justice, what’s next for Peter after that? Depends how long that takes, doesn’t it, really?

1:56:39 Um, it depends. It will. I’ll probably take a breather for a day or two, um. There will be a number of people that I will want to see and say thank you to, a very, very big thank you. So once I’ve done my thank yous, probably spent an evening drinking a bit too much red wine for my own good.

1:57:13 I’ll probably turn my sights on someone else. Still got that public service left in you, don’t you? But I love work. Yeah, you know, I’ve got the energy and enthusiasm for work that I had when I was half my age. How old are you, Peter?

1:57:34 Thank you. Never told me I was going to get offset at 60. Oh, okay, 60. 60 is the number 50. But I, I just, you know, I have an enthusiasm for work.

1:57:44 I just love it, you know, it, and there have been times in the last 18 months when I’ve been hunting Kevin Parle when, quite frankly, I’ve gone I’ve never felt more alive, you know, when this great nugget of information comes in, and you go, okay, um, that bit needs to go to my open source guy. Yeah, ping that over there. Can you deal with that? I’ll do this little bit. Right, um, who else should I contact?

1:58:14 Oh yeah, um, yeah, they might be over there with that bump. Yeah. And then you get communication, and it’s corroborated, you know, what you’ve been told is corroborated, and it’s there, and you go, we’re on at something. You know, likewise, there have been moments of crushing disappointment, because organized crime have come forward and have quite frankly taken the mickey out of me, and I’ve fallen for it. They’ve given me tough information, wasted my time, wasted my money and drained my emotions.

1:58:52 Fine. What do you expect if gobby Peter Bleksley is going to go in the media saying I’m going to find a man that law enforcement manifestly have failed to do so in 16 years? Then what do you expect? You’re not going to be universally popular. Not only are you going to get the social media abuse, but you are going to get every scam email imaginable.

1:59:20 Right? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cole’s, of course, the car tax needs renewing. What, your dope is less than three years old? He doesn’t need any tax, you know, MOT, rather, sorry, MOT.

1:59:34 You know, all kinds of notes. I’ll get every scam email imaginable, because my email address is out there and people just want to make a fool of me, you know, and take my money, but they must think I’ve just floated up the Thames on a water biscuit. You’ve been around, you know. It’s ludicrous. Well, I hope you get your man.

1:59:53 Thank you, and I’m wishing you all the best. And if anybody here, uh, has any information, contact you. We’ll have your information website below this episode anyways. Thank you. Um, I want to finish with a couple of questions about you.

2:00:05 If I would ask some of your best friends, what is Peter’s superpower? How does this man do everything he does? How was he able to do television shows and detective work? What would they say it is? What is your superpower?

2:00:46 Don’t go down the hall of the haters, that’s what they want. Um, and I appreciate your advice as far as listening, and I love that concept, and this is what we try to do here. We try to put out ideas and let people form their ideas, so we can create, I like to call it, a marketplace of ideas, so you can come in and tune in to lots of different people’s points of view, and we can debate them and maybe test them, and then go with the best idea. And it’s what’s marked the upsurge of human civilization for thousands of years.

2:01:14 So let’s keep up this dialogue, and I agree, I don’t claim to have all the answers, and I don’t think you do either, and but it’s through that dialogue that we can come to a consensus, and also explore our humanity as well. So I appreciate that, and um, I really appreciate your ideas, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this city lately, um, and uh, we’ve been doing a lot of talking about what happened during the lockdown, and I get a lot of emails from people that are struggling with mental health, physical health, fear, um, their business is being shut down, and I hear from everybody. I talk to the cab drivers, and I talk to everybody, and I’m trying to offer solutions, and I’m also frustrated with the mechanisms of government and how sometimes people that make the decisions are detached from the communities they are supposed to serve, and I’m also asking questions about the police, and then and how that could be better.

2:02:03 So I appreciate you, uh, putting up with my 20 questions at once. Um, and I’ve learned a lot today about the Met Police, and I also understand that every police force is specific to the people it serves. I mean, that’s the definition of policing. So the New York model doesn’t work for London. The London model doesn’t work for Liverpool, and I recognize that, and I also recognize that that job, um, it’s expanded into so many things.

2:02:29 I mean, when you, your day, a police officer did quite a few things, but now you have to be to do 100 things and versed in so many ways and expected to do so much, and I think we need to understand our police better, give them more support, give them more understanding, give them more funding, more training, and let’s have them do what we need them for, because like you said, everyone’s gonna have to call the police one day, and when you do, you want them to come and save your life, or your son’s life, or your wife’s life, or something, and you know, if we don’t treat them right, they won’t be able to. So uh, I appreciate your perspectives, and I admire what you’re doing. It’s not easy to do what you do.

2:03:08 I can tell it’s in your head. It obviously takes up all your time, all of your mental energy, and I can see you’ve had very difficult days, and you’re obviously emotionally connected to those crimes, and I appreciate that, and um, I wish you all the best. So for everybody watching, listening, please take a look at that picture, tricky with the glasses there, that picture, because it looks like two different people. And let me just say on that very note, if I may, yeah, can I, we’ve had um, how many, two or three people, right, who have instantaneously gone for that one, and they’ve said, that’s how he looks now, with or without the glasses.

2:03:52 I know that creates some kind of confusion there, but when we’ve shown it to people that have instantly gone, I’ve seen him, and I’ll tell you what happened, it’s that one they go for, strangely enough. It’s strange, because they look like very different people. Yeah, and they also look like very different types of people based on that look. You know, so it’s fascinating how you can disguise yourself and hide, you know, because the guy on the right looks like he could be an IT professional, and the guy left looks like a thug maybe, or someone who’s, you know, having a hard time.

2:04:26 Yeah, I mean, these were computer enhanced, um, from his original police mugshots in 2004. So no one’s saying, you know, this is an exactly accurate representation, but the one that’s had that instantaneous recognition has been the one on the one there. Very interesting. Yeah, good. All right, well, I encourage everybody to look at those images, get the book Manhunt, where books are sold, watch, and, sorry, listen to the podcast, which are still on the BBC Sounds player, and, um, obviously check out your websites and your social media profiles.

2:05:03 If you have any ideas or tips or thoughts, contact Peter and let him know, uh, and try to help. Obviously, and if you are the criminals and gangsters, uh, I wouldn’t want to be you is what I would say, because I wouldn’t want Peter hunting me down in my spare time, and I hope he doesn’t have to hunt me down one day. That doesn’t sound like fun, but I sincerely, well, I’m convinced I won’t have to do that, but I think you’ve scared a lot of people straight, just knowing that you might hunt them down one day.

2:05:30 But you know, those harbouring or funding him, you know, I, I, I make no threat. I, I don’t have, I, I have no guns. I have no gang. I’m not in any position to, to threat, to threaten anybody, but you know, hypothetically speaking, we could have a deal. It’s a great way to do this.

2:05:50 It’s a, it’s a great deal I think that you’re offering, so hopefully someone takes you up on that. Um, Peter, thank you for, uh, your service in the police, and thank you for your hard work, and thank you for everything you do. I really appreciate it, and thank you for your ideas today. They really meant a lot to me, and I’ll be thinking about them a lot. So uh, wishing you all the best, let me know how we can help, and uh, all the best in, uh, hunting this man down, spreading the word.

2:06:13 Brian, please just spread the word, share it, spread it, you know, raising his profile, shrinks the world, and that’s what we’re trying to do. And I would just like to say thank you very much indeed for having me on here today. I’ve had a really enjoyable time. Thank you. My pleasure.

2:06:31 All right, until next time, wishing you all the best. Thanks, Peter.