A Force Like No Other by Colin Breen

Author:Colin Breen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstaff Press

We were also trying to calm the woman down, while trying to elicit stuff from her to establish what exactly she had seen. That’s one of the few times as a detective I was first there. Mostly when CID arrive at the scene, police are already there and the initial panic is gone and the area is all sealed off, secure. Your role at that stage is to sort of organise and begin the hunt for evidence. This was one occasion we knew the scene was definitely not contaminated.

That was quite harrowing to try and deal with that poor woman. I mean, she was standing there, watching her husband die in front of her. We were there to try and help her through that and you’re not trained in those skills. That just comes with experience and you try your best. Things like that stick with you for a long, long time. It turned out it was actually loyalists who shot him. They were having a problem with the prison officers.

20:32 – Special Branch Office, Belfast

One informant I had from west Belfast worked for me for a very long time, and he used to gather incredible information about terrorist crime, and indeed some ordinary crime. But terrorist crime was where his strength lay. He was working on a specific task for me, gathering information in relation to the murder of a policeman in west Belfast. I happened to be in another police station across the city and heard some cops talking about a raid that was due to take place in a house in south Belfast that night. It was being organised by the drug squad. I knew it was quite likely ‘my man’ would be at that party. So I spoke to one of the bosses involved in the operation to see if I could go along. I had to get myself involved in the raid because there was every possibility that he would be arrested and I needed him back on the street. Of course I couldn’t tell all the police involved why.

What he was doing at the time was very important and, to be honest, whether he was smoking a joint or not at a party didn’t really come into it. It was a judgement call but he was getting information for me in relation to a murder and obviously that takes precedence over anything that may have occurred at the party. It was a fairly big raid. There were a lot of police personnel involved. The target premises was a three-storey terraced house. The flat we were interested in was on the top floor.

The army were also involved, supplying night sun – which is the big spotlight to light an area up, allowing police to prevent escape from the premises – from a helicopter. They had two prison vans organised to take the people that would be arrested to the police office for processing. When the raid started I went up and entered the top floor with other police in plain clothes.

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