THE 'AUTISTIC DETECTIVE'
Police, Prostitutes, Corruption and the Watchdog that didn't Bark.
The Untouchables, Scotland Yard’s anti-corruption squad, spent almost seven years trying to nail detective constable Dan Williams for pimping prostitutes on a sugar daddy website. But the prosecution has now collapsed in costly and embarrassing failure.
Williams, who is autistic, mostly represented himself since his arrest and suspension on full pay in 2014.
With no legal training, the 44-year-old detective ran circles around his legal opponents in a series of pre-trial hearings that slowly chipped away at the prosecution case and the evidence the police wanted to put before the jury in May.
On March 2, the prosecution was fatally wounded when Judge Michael Grieve QC chucked out the main charge against Williams of misconduct in a public office by controlling prostitutes for gain, describing it as “unsustainable”.
Six days later, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) formally abandoned the trial. The Untouchables hid behind the skirt of prosecutor Gillian Jones QC as the CPS announced it was “no longer in the public interest” to continue with the remaining lesser charges.
As will soon become apparent, the public interest in the case of Regina v DC Dan Williams lay somewhere else.
It can now be disclosed that the prosecution had also lost a legal bid to prevent DC Williams from airing explosive allegations of police corruption at his trial.
Judge Grieve ruled that Williams could present a whistle-blowing defence to the jury and argue that his prosecution was retaliation for speaking up about the “serious corruption and criminality” he claimed to have witnessed while serving on the Flying Squad, which investigates the UK’s most dangerous armed robbers.
Williams claims that between 2006 and 2011 senior officers turned a blind eye to violent criminals because they were valuable informants and, furthermore, that crucial evidence was withheld from a trial leading to a potential miscarriage of justice.
Judge Grieve’s ruling meant Williams could subpoena senior officers and prosecutors to answer questions about specific Flying Squad operations.
The prospect was so concerning that Gillian Jones QC is understood to have met with the director of public prosecutions to discuss an appeal.
In his explosive witness statement, revealed here for the first time, Williams claims senior officers were protecting a prolific armed robber known as ‘the Commander’, who was also an associate of a notorious London crime family.
Phone taps, surveillance and co-conspirators variously identified ‘the Commander’ as having a role in the £1.75m Menzies heist at Heathrow Airport in February 2004 and the £1.4m gold bullion robbery one month later at the Johnson Matthey depository in north London.
But according to Williams, senior officers refused to arrest the top gangster and his true role was kept hidden from the court because he was a valued informant who operated with impunity. The gangster denies this.
More startling, perhaps, is Williams’ claim that during the 2005 trial of four men for the Johnson Matthey robbery he was ordered to withhold vital evidence from their lawyers and the judge.