TRIGGERnometry - Undercover Cop: "Drug Policing Makes Things Worse"

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

SPONSORED BY:  *Ridge Wallet* Use Code “TRIGGER ” for 10% off your order at https://www.ridge.com/TRIGGER Neil Woods is a former UK police officer who spent fourteen years (1993-2007) infiltrating drug gangs as an undercover police officer. Neil is now an active member of the international drug policy reform movement. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I worked undercover for about for just less than 14 years. So I used to catch drug dealers for a living, essentially. And over that space of time, I realized that everything that I was doing was not only futile, because futility would be bad enough, but it actually was causing immense harm, not only to individuals who were vulnerable people who needed help, but also it was actively increasing the levels of crime, in particular violent crime, in our society. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.

I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our fantastic guest today is a former undercover police officer here in the UK. Neil Woods, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you.

It's great to have you on the show. We've got so much to talk with you about. We're going to talk about drugs. We're going to talk about corruption and the police force. We'll talk about lots of things. Before we do, for those people in our audience watching and listening who don't know who you are you are you where you are how are you where you are how you sitting here talking to us uh well i am a former police officer former undercover police officer

and i worked undercover for about for just less than 14 years um and i used to almost entirely investigate uh drugs offenses so i used to catch drug dealers for a living essentially and over that space of time i realized that everything that I was doing was not only futile, because futility would be bad enough, but it actually was causing immense harm not only to individuals who were vulnerable people who needed help, but also it was actively increasing the levels of crime, in particular violent crime, in our society. And like many police officers like me around the world,

I now campaign as part of an international movement for an evidence-based drug policy to take the power away from organized crime. And go for it. Well, all I was going to say is, before we get into talking about policy and all of that, just talk to us through the process of what you actually used to do. Yeah, I used to travel from one inner-city area to another, and I would work undercover in those areas for around six or seven months. And I would essentially pretend to be a problematic drug consumer,

I would network amongst people like that, people who lived in squats and homeless and street people. And I would get them to introduce me up the chain to the local drug dealers. And then by increasingly large amounts, network with the sort of regional controllers to see how far up the ladder I could get. And infiltrate those gangs to gather evidence of conspiracy. And then they would all get arrested at the culmination of that operation. So surely, if I am a normal person, listen to this, I'm going, well, you've done a smashing job, you've come along, you've outed a drug gang, they all get arrested, they all get locked up. Isn't that brilliant for protecting the community from the evil of drugs?

Well, I used to believe so. I used to think, you know, this is great. I'm so privileged to be part of the police who go after the most dangerous people in our society. But the reality is that whilst the police are very, very good at catching drug dealers, and they are really good at it, if you gave them twice the resources and told them to catch twice as many, then they would. But that's part of the problem. That's actually a significant part of the problem because the police never reduce the size of the market,

but they do change the shape of it. And if you police it more aggressively, then you change it. then you change it more aggressively. And what it means is that perpetually gets more violent because you create a Darwinian situation on the streets of our nation and around the world where the most ruthless and violent criminals are the ones that are left behind and successful.

Drugs policing sharpens the sword of organised crime. And nothing sharpens it as much as covert policing, like the kind of thing that I used to do. But it took me a long time to realize that. You know, I had to face up to the evidence before my eyes. And it's odd, you know, when you're really wrapped up in that world of covert policing, the intensity of it, you are resistant to that evidence, you know? You're so wrapped up.

You've got to have that drive and believe in what you're doing. And to be honest, and look around and be honest about the impact of it, that took time for me. I was a bit slow. Was there a single moment that sparked an epiphany in you where you thought, hang on a second, I'm doing more harm than good here? There was a lot, to be honest, because I was resistant to it. And there's probably three key ones. Do you want me to run through them?

But I think those briefly. Okay, so I suppose the first one of the first was in Nottinghamshire. And I just sort of worked out that I really needed to network amongst the homeless people, the people who are really struggling with life. So I was learning to dress down and be really filthy clothes, disgusting clothes. And I even developed a technique that at the end of the day, I would take my clothes off and tie them up in a plastic bag and put them in a warm place overnight,

so they'd really smell the next day, which my backup team used to love, as you can imagine. In fact, they loved it so much. They were driving me to the plot, the place where I was working with the day, to drop me off. And they were driving me with the windows blown down

and their heads out of the window shouting, you dirty bastard. Which, you know, it was nice, but I could see the point. I was a mess. I looked a mess, smelt a mess. Anyway, they dropped me off and I started walking to meet this heroin dealer

that I've been buying weights of heroin off for quite a while. And as I'm walking along, it's where the red light area used to be in Nottingham, near where the goose goose fair isn't. And it's a long, bendy road. And as I'm walking on this road, I hear this voice that said, sex for sale. And I thought,

well, I know this is Nottingham, but half past one in the afternoon, that's quite forward. And I kept walking. And again, I heard sex for sale. I didn't see her. Then I heard it heard again, sex for sale. And then as the road straightened up, I saw her. As I'm walking towards her, she looked me up and down, obviously the state of me. She looked me up and down and said, cheap sex for sale? Well, I walked past. I didn't think anything more of it. And I went to buy the heroin from the dealer,

and then I did an evidence drop, and then I went to buy some crack cocaine, and then at the end of the day, I did a debrief. Because what you do, you sit around with the team, you evidence the, you know, you go through the evidence system, you tell, intel everyone. Tell, the whole team needs to know what's going on, in other words. And I told them about this woman offering me cheap sex, and they all laughed.

And whenever I've had a big audience in front of me or a group of people, they've always laughed. And I trained later, undercover cops later, and everyone laughs. But when I look back on that day, I can close my eyes. And I've got no idea what the heroin dealer looks like. It's just one more dealer in an endless, endless stream of dealers. But I can picture her completely. She was tall, slim, and she wasn't the day over 21. and she was clutching a kind of special brew.

And she was clutching that special brew because she was trying to fend off a withdrawal from heroin, which is what took her. That withdrawal is what took her to the streets of Nottingham to offer me cheap sex. And it sort of haunted me that night

because I represented all of the resources of the state and was a lot of resources into me, all my backup team. and I walked right past her. There was no other resources there to help her, and she clearly needed help. And that sort of, I suppose it was one of the first clues to me

that something really wasn't right here because there's always another dealer. And theoretically, the way that cops talked at the time, theoretically, what I was doing was to protect her, was to stop these evil drugs getting onto the street and corrupting people like her. That's the theory, isn't it? And yet she was there on the streets

because she's got no legal protection. So that was one thing. Another thing was what I learnt was that in order to get people to do what I want, I have to manipulate them. And so I would always seek out the most vulnerable people because they're the easiest to manipulate. And if that seems ruthless, well, of course it's ruthless.

That is the nature of undercover drugs policing. It's bloody ruthless. And so one guy I manipulated in Nottingham, a guy called Cammy. I mean, I got really friendly with him. I wooed him, you know. And I wooed him because he was very useful to me, because he was on the periphery, the very periphery of an organisation called the Bestwood Cartel. He was a user dealer for them.

And how did you woo him? Well, I spent time with him, but most importantly, I used empathy. I listened to him. And, you know, I heard about his problematic childhood, abusive father, that kind of thing. And I just spent time listening. But also, I had some fun with him. I went shoplifting with him, which was great fun. No, seriously, you know, if you know you've got to get out of fear jail car, it's great,

especially if you're acting a pair, you know, take turns and be in looking. out, that kind of thing. Anyway, so I spent a lot of time with him. And, you know, that was another very successful operation. I think there was 56 people arrested, a few decent gangsters. But the thing, but the trouble is he was arrested as well. And he was committing offences on bail that I was gathering evidence against him for while I was being friendly with him. And when he was in police custody, he ended up being on minute-to-minute watch, suicide watch. And as he told the interviewing officers. The reason for that is that this was the last straw for him. It was the last, it was the biggest blow for him because he thought he'd finally found a friend he could talk

to. He'd never had that before. And that's what made him suicidal. So therein lies the ruthlessness, really. And that, you know, that hit me like a ton of bricks and that it was just emotionally disturbing to me. And then, I suppose that the real defilemma. mining mode. I still went into it, though. I still carried on because I was persuaded to do it because it was pitched to me that, look, these next gangsters, they're even worse than the last lot. We need you to catch them. And by this time, I'd become a sort of, I suppose a troubleshooter so that because I'd had some success, I got the reputation and that meant that I got the more difficult jobs. And the job, the next job I did, the Bergerabad boys,

they had two other other undercover cops tried to get close to them and they hadn't managed it. So they persuaded me to have a go. And that's why I went back into the work. But for that operation, I mean, I was convinced I was going to die on several times in that operation. I was stripped at gunpoint. I was assaulted. It was every single day of that operation in the company of the Berger Bar Boys when I was with them. I always felt that there was a potential imminent violence every single day.

But at the end of the seven months, I got evidence against 96 people. The six main gangsters and 90 other people, all the sex workers that they were employing, runners, all these people. And I knew there was actually no one else to catch because there were no new phone numbers that I hadn't already got. No people mentioned that I hadn't already met. So I thought, wow, this is just going to wipe the place clean. This is extraordinary. And there were cops brought in, hundreds of cops brought in, five different counties provided help for this.

And so I thought this is going to be a dramatic effect. Anyway, two weeks afterwards or sometime after the event, the intel officer spoke to me, who was tasked with keeping his ear to the ground, just to see the impact of the operation. And he said to me, yep, we managed to win. interrupt the heroin and drug heroin and crack cocaine supply in Northampton for a full two hours. Seven months of work, 96 people arrested, all of that trauma that still scars me to this day

from that event, from that operation to interrupt it for just two hours. That's not even enough time for someone to rattle from heroin. Hey Francis, have you decided what to get your dad for father's day? Same thing as always. A couple of points down the dog and duck. Plus, a new Brexit means Brexit car sticker to replace the one I got him last year. Mate, Brexit was in 2016. Do you not think he might want something a bit more up to date, like a new Ridge wallet? This is mine. It's smooth, sleek, stylish and it can hold 12 cards and there's also a clip on the bag for cash as well.

He's not going to create a bulge in your trousers like those bulky old wallets. It'll make your dad look like a top-level player. Great idea! He can also put his Brexit sticker on it, which means a price Problematic older ladies are gonna love him. Yeah, okay. The great thing about Ridge is that they give you a lifetime guarantee, which means if you want, you can have just one wallet for the rest of your life. Ridge is so confident in their product, they'll give you 45 days to test drive their wallet.

That means you can get the wallet, use it, and if you don't like it, you can return it in 45 days. Unlike Brexit. Because Ridge are such great guys, they're going to give you 15% off. and free worldwide shipping and returns. That's 15% off and free worldwide shipping and returns. To take advantage of this incredible offer, go to ridge.com forward slash trigger. That's ridge.com forward slash trigger

and use our special promo code, which is, of course, Trigger. You know, it shouldn't have shocked me because I've been observing this kind of thing for years. These doubts have been creeping in, but that was a very stark piece of. of reality that two hours before the new phone number and someone had been able to deliver. Just like that. Now, I don't know for certain that the Bergerba Boys' infamous rivals, the Johnson crew,

were the people who took up that opportunity that we'd created for them. But you can sort of picture the scene, can't you? The rival gang, they're all sat around, maybe having a smoke. One of them comes in and says, wow, boys, put the call in. We're going to make a fortune. Guess what the cops have done for us? They flocked up the Berger Bar boys. Wow.

and they'll be celebrated. And that's the reality. And this is at every level, at every level from the streets of the UK to transnational organised crime, if you catch someone, you're always making someone else happy because the market never shrinks.

And the really grim irony, actually, for the Bergerbal boys' arrest, if it was the Johnson crew, who took up that opportunity and bought a load more drugs and sold them you know, for the next few weeks and months, all the drugs that were caught that were found with the Bergerba boys,

the guy that supplied them and the next rung up the ladder, get to supply them twice because he supplies the opposition as well. So he's really happy because he's sold the same markets drugs twice. This is the reality people need to understand. So, and that is such, I mean, it's depressing, really, because what it's showing people and what it's demonstrating is that you're never going to get rid of demand. There's always going to be a demand for these type of hard drugs.

So that being the case, what should we do now? Well, we have to take control because it's out of control at the moment. We have to take control by legally regulating the market. These worst elements in our society are only empowered because we've given them this tremendous power. this huge financial benefit of the illegal drugs trade. We've created this problem through drug prohibition. We've created this problem by banning the drugs.

So we have to take control. We have to regulate the products. Now people, you know, people get scared of that idea because it's normally presented as we need to legalise. And this one word is a scary word, isn't it? It conjures all sorts of images like uncertainty and maybe a free-for-all. But you need to break it down into, actual policy chunks about what that means, individual policies. Because it's not a free-for-all.

The free-for-all is now. It's the Wild West now. This is about taking control back. So, for example, heroin, that's the easiest one to regulate. We wouldn't even need a change in the law. We just go back to the British system. And the British system is the way we used to do it in the UK, that if someone had a problem with drugs, if they found themselves addicted to heroin or cocaine, they would go to the doctor and they'd get help. Rational, pragmatic help. And what that would mean is that they would get a prescription from the doctor.

Just a pragmatic medical response to an unfortunate medical condition. And we had the British system since the 1920s, right up until the end of the 1960s. It was stopped by the diplomatic pressure of the United States. States. But at the end of the British system in the 1960s, there was only 1,046 heroin consumers in the UK, and the number was falling. Within 20 years of the British system ending, we had 300,000. And there's a very clear cause and effect there that the market was given to organised crime. Suddenly there was a big financial incentive for people to make a huge amount of money from it.

and organized crime have long been good at exploiting people, particularly where there is poverty and inequality, but also where people are traumatized. Because, and I found this out actually by using my empathy and listening to people over the years that I worked undercover, I refer to it now as weaponizing empathy. But I did learn a lot, and I learned that all. almost all of the people who are using heroin and crack cocaine,

almost all of these people are self-medicating for trauma, and most of it is childhood trauma, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect. But of course, now, now that I'm an activist, now I read the academic papers on these topics. And the academic papers also backed that up, that at least two-thirds of problematic heroin and crack cocaine consumers are self-medicating for these things. And organized crime exploit these people. And until we banned those drugs,

organized crime couldn't exploit those people. So we leave them to the mercy of organized crime rather than taking care of them as a society, which is just disgusting, really, when you think about it. It's an argument that makes a lot of sense when we sit down and have this conversation in this way. And I know that you deal with politicians and, you know, you interact with people who have the power to change this. What do they say to you to these arguments? Well, I mean, it depends who it is.

And it's important to observe, I think, when talking about politicians in their views, that politicians respond to what they perceive the public believe. you know, as Tony Ben famously said, politicians are either signposts or weather veins, which is a rather cynical way of saying, because I have no problem with politicians being politicians. You know, I've no problem with them behaving the way that they want their constituents to behave.

It's just, that's just politics. But they're a little out of touch at the moment. The public are ahead of them. But sorry, to answer your question, many of them will just well most of them don't understand the issue that's the most important thing to say they don't understand the issue

or even some conservative politicians but they just they just don't I mean you know the daftest statements come out of so many politicians right across the political spectrum they will say that drugs cause these harms and what they're saying they're evidencing that drug prohibition causes these harms

And it doesn't take much explanation to get it. No. Well, you just did it in 10 minutes. Yeah, exactly. But we have to have that opportunity to be able to talk to them, which is why I'm always very grateful for interviews and conversations like this. Because I can say to an audience, if you contact your MP, they will listen to you. If you email your MP, they will listen to you. They all tell me that, that they sit up and take notice.

If they have an email three times in the same topic, they're first. sitting up and taking notice of it. But there are, you know, there's a variety of views, but I have to say that the growing support amongst politicians for drug law reform is across the political spectrum. It doesn't sit any particular place. It's not of the left and it's not of the right. It's scattered across the whole political spectrum, which is encouraging and it's good and it's the way it should be. Neil, that is good. But the question I asked you was really trying to get at, why hasn't happened yet? If you're right, And if what you're saying is correct, and I'm sure it is, why have we not had drug policy reform yet?

Right. I love that question because there's an aspect of this that I'm working on very hard at the moment. Now, there's a few answers to that. One is that the press and the media have misrepresented drugs and drug policy and the results of it for decades. Journalists, media gurus can talk whatever shit they want about drugs because they know they can get away with it. They don't have to evidence it. and they do make up a load of shit about it. That's one reason.

Politicians spouting moralistic rubbish is another problem. But the biggest problem, and I've come to believe this, the biggest problem is what the police say. Now, this is not the fault of the police, I have to stress, because the police have a duty to inform the public of what they do. They also have a duty to maintain public confidence, So when the police do a series of arrests or they seize a load of drugs, then they present this to the public in the news or on social media as a success.

And they do this increasingly actually on social. They're getting more sophisticated at doing this on social media. So the police are constantly bombarding the images to the public of big seizures of cocaine, big cannabis factories all the time. And this is like powerful marketing. These are the same images repeated over and over. It's either the drug seizures or it's the rows of mugshots of a gang that's been caught. They're constantly repeated to the public.

And the message that the public gets is that, well, for one, they're reminded there's something to be scared of. And second, they're reassured that the police are doing something. Look at that. What they've done? Look all these drugs they've caught. And they're reassured. the public are told essentially that the current policy works.

But it's dishonest. It's not true. And the police know this from their own criminal databases, their own criminal intelligence, that actually more often than not, drugs policing increases crime in an area. Because if you create a gap in the market, then two or more people will fight over that gap. And violence goes up. Happens time and time again. The police know this.

but they're not telling the public that, are they? They're not telling the public that this will not prevent anybody from getting hold of their drugs. It's not even going to put the price up at all. It's making no difference at all. But it's not the way it's presented to the public. Now, you have to see this in comparison with conventional crime because if police arrest the burglar,

burglaries will go down because there are a limited number of people who will commit a burglary. So that is a positive, provable, activity. Drugs policing does not reduce crime, but the police are constantly telling the public that it is. So that, I think, is the biggest impediment to the growth of the social movement. Because like any social justice issue in history, change with drug policy will come through the growth of the social movement rather than political leadership.

same as any social movement, whether it's gender equality, the illegality of homosexuality, whatever it is, comes from social movement. And what the police are constantly, daily, telling the public is slowing down that movement, which is one of the reasons why Leap, my organisation is so important, because it falls on us, really. We are duty-bound to challenge those narratives. And when we were talking with Carl Hart about this, he made such a good point, which is we've been in, the messages and the narratives that we've been given from mainstream media, from movies, from books, they're so infantile, you know, the junkie. And the moment I say that word, we can all picture that particular person in our heads, but it's a two-dimensional character.

And like you said, it doesn't address the fact that this is obviously someone deeply traumatized, deeply damaged, using drugs to just be able to cope and function throughout life. Not really function either, just exist. Yeah, exactly. And it's dehumanising, isn't it? Yeah. It's always dehumanizing language. And different regions around the UK, they have their favourites, you know. Bagrat is one of my most detested ones. But, you know, I say it just so that people can be aware of just how dehumanising.

it can be. And Carl's right. I mean, I love Carl. His angle on this is, on that topic is, is very good. I've lost my thread. No, it's fine. We were talking about how mainstream media films dehumanize people who take drugs, and what they do is essentially infantilize a very complex discussion conversation. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's so many examples I could give you, but one that sticks in my head is, there's a young woman called Uma, who I spoke to I got to know quite well. And she was amazing. She was one of the most generous people I've ever met.

And this is very common amongst problematic heroin users, actually. They're really, really generous. And because I'd had some people being suspicious of me having money, I decided to play rattling one day, just pretend to be rattling with drawing. And so I wandered around in the morning, you know, obviously rattling and holding my, the way I was holding myself.

and Uma came over to me and says, hey, mate, you hanging out? I says, yeah, yeah, but I'll be all right when I get some money. And she just pulled a fibre out of the pocket. Says, there you go, mate. And I says, well, aren't you going to need that? She's not, I'm fine, I've just had some. I'll be all right for the next few hours.

You need it now. Just absolute pure, unadulterated honesty. She saw the need. She can give it a second thought. She was incredible. But she said to me one day, she said, well, I can stop using. I do, actually. Every few weeks, I stop to bring my tolerance down.

I stop for a couple of weeks. But the problem is, when I stop, I become suicidal. Because I remember the feeling of my uncle's fingernails when he used to sexually assault me as a little girl. So for her, and like so many like her, taking heroin was a pragmatic, rational decision. Very rational. kept her alive. It helped her forget. Heroin's actually really, really good at helping people deal with trauma.

Really good. That's why they do it. That's why people do it. To cope with trauma, not deal with, I would say, to cope with trauma, right? Yeah, that's a good correction, actually, to cope with, to blot it out. In the absence of any other care. Well, exactly. This is what I was going to go. I mean, it strikes me that obviously one of the problems here is we've got people who are not getting, mental health and ways of processing trauma, which are available. I mean, they're there. We know how to help people who've been through trauma now. We've got tools to do it.

But they're obviously falling through the cracks. And then that's when you find ways to cope instead of addressing the issue, right? Reveens rather than cracks. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's an awful thing to think about, really. And obviously for you to have seen that, to see so many people go through that. I don't know. Like, where do we go from here, Neil?

Where do we go? Yeah, where do we go? Well, I don't know what to ask you because what you're saying makes absolute 100% logical sense to me. And every guest we had on, particularly in recent times, I've become a more bad cop when we interview people and I'm like testing their ideas and trying to find a floor in their argument.

and it's a no-brainer to me. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the evidence is so powerful. The arguments are so clear. This is so clearly just rationale and logic that it makes our job, as anyone involved in the drug law reform world, it makes our job very easy to explain people,

but we just need the platforms, which is why I'm so really grateful for you to invite me to come and speak to you, because it's the platforms we need. We need people out there sharing it. We need people out there discussing it with their friends and family and getting them to watch this. This is how we win.

This is the process of the social movement growing. So I really appreciate it. But where to go from here in terms of policy? Well, I mean, you know, we could have overdose prevention sites like they have in European countries in Canada. No one's died in one of those anywhere since they started anywhere in the world. And yet our government is saying no.

There's no excuse for them. We've got the biggest drug deaths in Europe. Scotland's biggest drug deaths in the world per capita. We need overdose prevention sites right now. It needs to be urgently happening. We need to be contacting every one of our MPs to demand it. We need heroin-assisted treatment, which is the British system revived. It's happening already in Cleveland, paid for by the money from the Police and Crime Commissioner, actually.

The police are paying for this, which is, you know, the police being ahead of the politics in this country is extraordinary. really. We need a legally regulated cannabis market to protect our children because it's easier for our children to get cannabis than it is alcohol because dealers don't ask for ID, do they? And, you know, there is evidence from North America that regulated markets protect our children better, so we need to protect them. But also, you regulate the cannabis markets and you're taking a huge amount of money out of the pockets of organized crime, which they always reinvest profits into corruption. So we're making our society safer and more secure.

This is a security issue. We're making our society more secure. If we do that, we take that money away from them. And also, from a public health perspective, we don't know what's in that bag of green that a dealer delivers. Not really. You know, some connoisseurs might have something to say

about what I've just said, but more often than that, we don't. So every commodity needs to be it needs to be regulated to protect people. And, you know, and all the drugs in between, they need to be sold by licensed pharmacies. Now, if you consider MDMA, for example, MDMA is the perfect example of the drug

that is not banned because it's dangerous. It's dangerous because it's banned. And I'm sure, but you had Dave Nutton. I would imagine he's commenting on this as well. You know, this is all of the deaths that come from MDMA, is because it's unregulated, is because it's not what people expected, or it's a tablet, which is four or five times two bigger dose. These are regulatory issues.

Regulate that drug and you literally save lives. MDMA deaths will be virtually non-existent. And also, who are we to judge? Who is anyone to judge if someone wants to drop an MDMA pill and dance to electronic music in a field or wherever? Who cares? It's just the sort of liberty arguments don't get talked about very often. But really, it's, we need to have parallels with the social movement that ended the illegality of homosexuality and that's still developing to end the prejudice.

Because it's not for anyone to judge what other people do with their own mind and body, is it? And we need to be talking in those terms. And that's not a popular view. within the drug law reform world, that because, as it's pointed out to me by some allies, you can't argue about personal liberty because not enough people care about personal liberty, because they don't.

We've seen that over COVID. Yeah, exactly. They just don't care. Yeah. So, but I still, even though the evidence suggests that other arguments are stronger, I always like to mention it because it's another topic of conversation we need to get out there.

What right do we have to judge? anybody what they do with their own mind and body. What right does anyone have? Well, I suppose on that one, there is a counter argument I can think of, which is drugs have an impact on people beyond the person who's taking them, right? So I can see the argument for that. I just think when it comes to your explanation of why people take drugs, I just think you need a different approach. Yes, someone becoming a drug addict has an impact on their family, on people around them, on society, it's not good. But the way to deal with that is to address the cause of what's making them take the drugs, I suppose.

What do you think is the strongest argument against your position? Strongest arguments against? Yeah, the thing you find most difficult to have to deal with, if people challenge you. About decriminalization or legalization? I can't think of a single rational, strong argument, to be honest. I mean, you know, all of the opponents of drug law reform are just bat-shit crazy. They're just moral, it's just moral judgment. How can you argue with moral judgment?

I mean, you said you've had Peter Hitchens on. He's just looking at it from a moralistic lens. He wants to judge and control people. He hasn't got any rational arguments at all. He argues that cannabis is behind terrorism and violence and it's not. The evidence is quite clear it isn't. So there really isn't any argument. it's difficult to counter, honestly.

But I appreciate you challenging that point I made then, though. And it's an important point you just made. And it prompts me to make clear that not all drug use is problematic. In fact, 90% of drug use is not problematic. And the 10% that is problematic, it's a sliding scale. So some people need more intervention than others. The important thing to note about our current drug laws, about the system of prohibition

is it makes problematic use more likely and more dangerous because people are pushed to the margins they're criminalised so they're not able to get help so wherever you look around the world where there is less prohibition and more harm reduction for that problematic cohort

there is less problematic consumption so for example in Portugal where they've decriminalised possession They haven't gone the whole way and legalised, legally regulated the market yet. But they've decriminalised possession. So people who have a problem with drugs, they get help. So their problematic consumption has dramatically dropped. Their overall consumption hasn't dropped. There's still just as many people taking drugs as there was before.

It made no difference to that. Their problematic consumption has gone down. The problems with blood-borne viruses has gone down. Their drug deaths have dropped. They used to be the highest now. They're the lowest. You can't argue with that. No, you can't.

You alluded to something that the money from drugs then went into corruption. And the one thing that I wanted to talk with you about, well, there's lots of things, obviously, this has been an incredible interview, so thank you for coming on. But it's corruption within the police because it's something that I don't think we talk about enough.

And I'll give you an example. We all know the Stephen Lawrence case, the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, obviously awful, obviously horrendous. and we all talk about the racist element of it because it played a large part. But we don't also talk about the fact that the coppers involved, a lot of them, were corrupt. How big is corruption within the police force a problem and how much of it is due to these gangs being awashed with drugs and being able to buy coppers and make them corrupt?

It's huge. It's the scale of corruption that's caused by drug prohibition, is eye-watering and uncomfortable. Now, I make lots of my former colleagues uncomfortable by saying this because it feels like it's a criticism of them. It's not. It's still a tiny minority of cops, but a tiny minority of cops can do a massive, massive load of harm.

And it's absolutely endemic. It's endemic and impossible to defend against. Impossible. Because there's too much money involved. There is more money in the criminality of the illicit drug market. than anything, any other form of criminality, anything. But it's not just the money which causes the corruption, it's the mechanism of trying to police the drug markets,

actually causes it. Now, bear with me, I'll try and explain this. So where the police have a successful operation, and they arrest, say, a drug dealer which controls the heroin supply in a quarter of the city, The dealer or Kingpin character or gang which is able to take up that opportunity or most able to take up that opportunity

created by that policing activity is someone who controls another quarter of the city so they expand their influence they increase their market share which means they expand they increase their disposable income and the police were continually changing the market like this continually

And what happens is you get people increasing their market share, or you get people forming monopolies, or you get people forming cooperatives, which means there's more money able to be invested in corruption. And over time, this mechanism is what increases corruption, and this happens at every level all over the world. One of the best examples for it is in Mexico. There used to be 20 cartels. Now there's only three cartels.

Each one of those three cartels has a GDP, if you put it in those terms, bigger than most West African countries. Those West African countries have been corrupted completely. In the last 12 months, there have been five military coups in West Africa. Each one of those military coups has been about the control of the single biggest financial asset for those nations. And the single biggest financial asset is the money. that's made through the cocaine transit routes. It's about who controls the bribes from transnational organized crime as what's driven those military coups.

So countries like Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Sierra Leone, these countries are now narco states. They are not run by legitimate democratic institutions. They're run by transnational organized crime. Because why corrupt a customs official and a police chief when you can afford to take over the whole government. And they can afford to take over the whole government because of decades of policing activity

which has thinned them out and made the last one standing incredibly rich. This is destroying the fabric of our democracy and our security worldwide. The global initiative into transnational organised crime which is a body which studies international police criminal intelligence They published a report last September which stated that

the growing power of transnational organized crime now were the single biggest threat to our security and even the system of democracy itself and we're doing this by fighting this war by trying to deal with police, by trying to deal with drugs by policing and this happens at every level. Now we feel very smug in our stable democracy in the UK, very smug but the corruption is here as well and I've come across it

numerous times I once in the operation in Nottingham we've been working very long hours and two of my backup team went off sick in the morning I got introduced to these two new cops I'd not met before

which unsettled me a little shook the hand of the first one no problem with him at all shook the hand of the second one and the hairs just went up in the back of my neck you know I'd been working under for months by this time and my senses were pretty fine-tuned, verging on paranoia. And this guy was just wrong. He was clearly wrong to me instinctively. So I went to the guy

running the operation, he said, boss, sorry, don't trust this guy, don't want him anywhere near it, don't want him to know him what I'm doing. He says, fine. We'll exclude him. Exclude them both, so they don't ask any questions. And they don't know anything about this job yet. So it's fine. didn't think much more of it but then 12 months later when the gangster Colin Gunn was brought down it turned out that that cop was an employee of Colin Gunn

he'd paid him to join the police his name was Charlie Fletcher his details are all over or on the internet by the time I met him he'd been in the police for seven years fucking hell and he was being paid

£2,000 a month on top of his police wages plus bonuses for good information Now he'd been paid to join the police. In the debrief for that, one senior cop said to me at the time, look, Woodsey, yeah, of course this happens. We know this happens. With this much money involved, how can it not happen?

And it is accepted and understood by senior covert police all over the country that this happens. But why doesn't the public know this? Don't you think the public should know this? But the problem is that one of the standing directives from the Home Office to chief constables is to maintain public confidence. Makes sense, didn't it? If the public lose confidence in the police, fabric of society could break down and all that.

But the trouble is, that means that constable, chief constables are not being honest with the public. And if the public knew the extent of the corruption, then I think the public would quite quickly demand change of their MPs. Now, consider the mechanisms that I used to work under as an undercover cop. before I got loaned to a particular constabulary, they would have to set up their operation

as dictated by the special operations unit. We'd have to have an Intel guy, an exhibits guy, backup, in a certain cell. And they were told they were not allowed to even communicate with their colleagues during the whole operation. They were completely separate. People wouldn't know where they'd gone or what they were doing. They were told, just before I got there,

that they were not allowed to ask me my real name, not allowed to ask me where I'm from, and they would be disciplined, punished, if they did. So I was working, I was working with the cops using the same pseudonym as I was by the gangsters.

And of course, the reason for that is to try and protect me. Now, consider this. That only happens for covert drugs operations. Doesn't happen for any other kind of policing. No, no, apart from witness protection, which is all about drugs, witnesses anyway, all of it. So that system in itself is evidence of just how seriously and the extent

of corruption that exists as a result of our drug policy. Hey Francis, do you go on the internet to look at naughty stuff? Yeah. Is it stuff that you'd be embarrassed to show your friends? Yeah. Is it stuff that would get you cancelled? Yeah. Well, Well, next time you decide to be naughty and watch more trigonometry, you need to use ExpressVPN. It doesn't matter, mate, because I use incognito mode. Ha! It doesn't matter what mode you use or how many times you clear your browsing history. Your internet service provider can still see every single website you've ever visited. That's why even when you're at home, you should never go online without using ExpressVPN.

My career is finished! There, there, you'll have to leave trigonometry, can't be helped. Anyway, it doesn't matter who your internet service provider is. ISPs in the US can legally sell your information to ad companies. ExpressVPN is an app that reroute your internet connection through their secure service so your ISP can't see the site you visit. Absolutely fresh. ExpressVPN also keeps all of your information secure by encrypting 100% of your data

with the most powerful encryption of age. Most of the time you won't even realize you have ExpressVPN on. It runs seamlessly in the background and it's so easy to use. All you have to do is tap one button and you're protected. What am I going to do? ExpressVPN is available on all your devices, phones, computers, even your smart TV. So there's no excuse for you not to be using it. Go on Francis, do the last bit.

If you don't want to end up like me, protect your online activity today, with a VPN rated number one by Business Insider. Visit my exclusive link, ExpressVPN.com slash trigger. And you can get an extra three months free on a one year packet. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash trigger. ExpressVPN.com slash trigger to learn more. And Neil, those corrupt cops, they're particularly, dangerous, aren't they? Because I remember you saying on another interview that actually,

if, you know, you aren't worried about former gangsters, but former police officers, that's something else entirely. Oh, God, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, for drug wars, we interviewed a good friend of mine, Frank Matthews, and he had a big problem with corruption in the Met. And there's a surprise. Well, it happens everywhere. It happens everywhere, but his problems are definitely all here. Well, he worked here. And he was a whistleblower for corrupt activity.

And when he was a whistleblower, he ended up being followed by an entire entire surveillance unit of Special Branch. He was being surveilled by his own team. And he got to the point with problems that he was having, with cops that he knew were corrupt, was that he thought he was going to get killed

and he's someone who's had more dealings with gangsters than probably anyone I know some very high level and international organised crime figures and they've never worried him as much as the corrupt cops and I have to say exactly the same thing

it's the corruption and negligence within policing that's almost got me killed more often than not and again you know I apologize to many of my colleagues which really get offended by this, but we all need to be honest. We all need to be honest because the way to protect our police, our criminal justice system and all of other institutions from this corruption, is to take the power away from organized crime and legally regulate the drug markets.

And until we do, this corruption is only going in one direction. You know, people watch line of GT. Okay, some of the dramatic lines in it are a bit far-fetched, but the substance of the corruption is very well informed. What about the wire? Have you seen the wire? I have, the wire is a masterpiece, and one of the reasons it's a masterpiece is because it's entirely based on truth.

My organisation, the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, I'm on the board of the organisation in America, and one of the other board members, a guy called Neil Franklin, he used to be on the murder squad in Baltimore that's featured and he knows all of the characters it's based on based on all real people

you know that the guy who's just died recently played the Omar Little that's it, Omar Devon Little he says he knows the person that's based on and that's absolutely accurate he's met it, he knows it it's all accurate he says the only thing that was really truly fictional

was the episode Hamstadam Yeah But the rest of it There's real people and real events. And it's a clear message to the wire, isn't it? You know, this ain't no war. Wars end. Yeah. You're right. It's a masterpiece. We've got literally a few minutes left, and it feels like it's flown by.

It's been really great to chat. Can we do just a couple of human interest questions? You talked about particularly the last big realization that you had when you spent seven months undercover and you felt that you might get killed every day. day. What was going on when you're there in that situation? Why did you constantly feel at risk and all of that? Well, I mean, the Berger Bar Boys had really refined the intimidation. They'd really got it down to an art form. And this is what our drug policy does. You know, the most successful gangs get really good at this. And they were, they were incredible. So the violence and threats

of violence that they'd used towards me, you know, they'd stripped me at gunpoint once. They took me to the edge of the race course. What was your relationship with them? Like, how did you ingratiate yourself with them? I built myself a bit of a reputation as being a good thief. And I built a reputation. I traded with a lot of the people who handle stolen goods. You know, and I could give them gifts sometimes,

and I was buying increasing weights from them. And I just became one of the people they were happy to deal with directly. But I was never I was never friendly with them Right So you go to a meeting And suddenly they strip you at gunpoint To make sure you haven't got a wire on you or something

Is that right? Yeah and that was an interest That was a decision I was pleased to make Because the day before I'd got a bit uncomfortable With how they were behaving towards me And so the day after I decided not to wear a wire And I've been wearing a camera by that point But that morning I thought will I shall I shan't I

And I decided not to What a good decision that was Because when they got me when they got me to the edge of that park and they said, right, strip, you're fucking 5-0, man, your fucking heat. And one of them lifted up a T-shirt and there was a gun tucked into his tracksuit bottoms. And now, it's weird the thoughts that go through your head when you've got this adrenaline flooding

your head. Because I looked at that gun in his track-suit bottoms and I thought, how the hell is that elastic keeping that gun off? It's a strange thing. And also, when he says you're a fucking 5-0, man, and I remember looking at him thinking, you're not old enough to have seen Hawaii 5-0. Yeah. Again, another's just weird things that go through your head.

Yeah. Yeah. And how do you keep your call? How do you keep your call under that kind of pressure? Because look, we all face pressure in our jobs. Yeah, maybe not like that, mate. Imagine you will wake up in the morning. I'm just here with a gun and my elastic going.

You're 5-0. Demanding your strip. I mean, well. I can imagine that part. Yeah. But how do you deal with that? How do you deal with that level of pressure? Because we talk about stress.

jobs. But that is something else entirely. Well, that's an interesting question because, you know, as a young man, when I've had my first near-death experiences working under cover, I was really pleased with myself. Because, you know, you don't know how you're going to deal with shit like that, do you? You don't know. But I had the advantage, like some people do, apparently, I had the advantage that when I have a surge, it doesn't work now, God no, but as a young man, when I had a surge of adrenaline, I had the sensation that time was slowing down. And I had a calming feeling that I could, I could think very clearly and that I had all the time in the world to think.

So I could do it with complete confidence. And I just had this feeling right, okay, there's a problem, got to think it through, deal with it. And I just stayed in that sort of moment, fueled by adrenaline, so to speak. And you know, it boosted my ego because I'm coming away from this. And my colleagues, my peers are saying, wow, you know, you're not breaking a sweat or what? Look at you. And that boosted my ego as a young man, suited me, thinking, wow, you know, I'm finally good at something. But no one told me that that was destroying the fabric of my brain,

that these events, you know, these high, high intense experiences were causing me damage. You know, I'm diagnosed now with chronic PTSD. And I have most days now are good. But I have some dark days. And I jumped and I, you know, I jumped into all of those times with wilder bad. and carelessness, really. I had no idea that would do that to me. And no one told me, you know,

the gung-ho culture within policing, we're within drugs policing. No one told me that perhaps I need to take a breath and look after myself. Anyway, I looked after myself was with alcohol. Did you find yourself almost becoming addicted to that kind of high-octane lifestyle?

Yeah, in the first few years, It drove me and I loved it. I did. I loved the intellectual exercise of the lying people, lying to people, the manipulating people. And I also love the challenge of, you know, it's like a rapid improvement. It's a rapid learning exercise. We all like to feel like we learn something and we develop personally, don't we? But it's like that's turning it up to 100. It's like you learn so much about yourself, literally in minutes. And that's a very heady experience to be able to learn and how you acutely learn people's body language and you become so quickly responsive to it. And it's very heady, but by the time I was working with the Bergerbal boys, it was just exhausting. I think I was already probably multiply traumatized,

well, I will have been. And I was just piling it on top by then. And Neil, you know, again, going back to Carl Hart's point of the word, we see the word junkie, or we hear the word junkie, we get an image. We do that exact same thing with the word gangster. But you've been with these people. You've talked with them, you've spoken to them, you've seen probably the other side to them. Who are these people?

Do they have similar personality traits, or is it literally from every part of, you know, the spectrum that life has to offer? Yeah, I get in discussion with some drug policy people I know about my use of the word gangsters. And I do use the word consciously, and I know that it has, it conjures up mixed images for different people, but it's a hook for an audience, so I use it. But I say gangsters, and some of them are generally vicious, but they're all a product of the system. They're all a product of drug prohibition, and they would not be the way they are unless drug prohibition, if it wasn't there, they wouldn't. And we need to be aware of that. Now, I'll give you an example.

There was a, back in 2001, I met this kid who was part of a gang and he was 16 when I met him. And he was a friendly kid, you know, I could have a laugh with him. He was a nice kid, good sense of humour. And then six months later, he'd become a terrifying 17-year-old. And I'd seen him change in that period of time. And he was changing and he was learning to become casually violent and casually and to intimidate people. And whereas at the start, I'd have a laugh with him. By the end, he'd casually bash my head into a lamp post

just to let me know his boss. Bang, there you go, as we're walking past. And I saw that change. And it was a conscious effort for him to learn to be like that because that's how his peers taught him he had to survive. And he's right. Because if you're casually violent like that, you don't get grassed up. People are scared of you, you don't get grassed up.

People are scared of you, people don't provide a witness statement. You survive longer. Now, I'm sure, now, bear in mind that back in 2001, it was unusual for someone so young to be at the front line of heroin and crack cocaine dealing. Now it's more often than not they are. Now they're all, there's 50,000 of them now,

more changed brought by drug prohibition, you know, well done. But I'm sure that that kid, when he was 12 or 13, wasn't looking to a future thinking, I'm going to be learning how to be as violent as possible. to be part of a drug dealing gangers, don't believe it. This is what the current system did to him. Now, the Bergerbal boys, they were second and third generation gangsters. They've been brought up that way by their parents.

But their parents didn't have to have been that way. We're doing this to our communities. We're doing this to our young men. It's changing the personalities of our young men. And it plays out. You see it play out. with the growing knife violence for the younger ones, the next generation,

they've got older peers telling them you need a reputation because their communities have been changed by this law. And how bad are the next generation going to be unless we turn it around? Well, Neil, on that happy note, we've come to the end of our, listen, it's been great, and I know you've got stories for days,

so perhaps if you're kind enough to come back at some point, we can delve into a little bit more. but for now, we're going to ask you a couple of questions from our local supporters that only they will get to see. But before we do that, we'll wrap up the main interview here by asking you the question we always ask at the end, which is what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think we really should be? Okay, now explain the mechanism of corruption. That brings us halfway to this next point. that corruption means that COP 26, the great environmental meeting,

which was trying to turn around the climate, trying to stop the climate catastrophe, many countries, which are the most important countries which need to stop deforestation, make pledges, but they can't go carry through those pledges because they don't control their own backyards. Drug dealing, transnational crime does. So I mentioned West Africa, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Senegal, Senegal, but if you look in Latin America as well, all of the equatorial countries, governance has dissolved. The governance have no say of what goes on in the forests. It cannot be stopped because drugs-organized crime is too powerful. There is only two options to stop this disaster. And that is to get transnational organized crime around the table. I'm sure that would be popular. If we want to stop the planet burning, that's option one.

Or we take their power away from them by taking their market off them by legally regulated. Those are the two choices if we want to stop the lungs of the world being cut down. Neil, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on. If people want to find you online or your work, where do they go? Well, please follow the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, Leap, UK. We have the website. On Twitter and Instagram, we are at UK Leap. My Twitter is at Woodsey Zero, which is, I know, I chose it before I knew I was going to be public.

But you'll find me. And the books, if you want more undercover stories, it's good, cop, bad war. If you want a history of British drug policy, it's drug wars. Fantastic stuff. Neil Woods, thank you so much. And thank you for watching and listening. We're going to do our locals questions now, but thank you so much for the moment. you very soon, another brilliant episode like this one, or also, all of which go out at 7pm UK time.

And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available to the podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. The government has just passed a bill, which is... Holy shit, I know.