With Yardies seemingly attracted to Nottingham likes bees to honey, Francis was keen to avoid street dealing and the hassles it could bring. He embraced his new role with gusto, raising his profile as a bona fide drugs worker, attending Home Office select committee hearings at Westminster on the crack cocaine problem and appearing in an ITV television documentary to talk about the problems facing crack users. During this time he was in fact building up his power base and recruiting people who would later become his dealers. As the main CAT worker, he would be in and out of police cells on an almost daily basis to offer ‘advice’ to addicts who had been arrested. He also had access to depositions in criminal cases. This all provided him with useful information, particularly when it came to who was grassing up who and the police’s weak points. Francis’s advice to those languishing in a cell and dreaming of weaning themselves off heroin or crack was, ‘Come and work for Dave, I’ll look after you.’
Francis told newspapers the Government was not doing enough to solve the cocaine problem that was blighting the city – and he sounded convincing. He waxed lyrical about what needed to be done and how the work carried out by him and his band of followers was an essential part of that process: ‘Crack cocaine users are people who have lost their houses, their jobs, sold most of their possessions and are no longer capable of looking after their children,’ he told reporters. ‘Their lives are chaotic. There is not a lot of point in giving them a nine-thirty appointment for four weeks’ time because they are never going to make it. For years they virtually denied that there was a crack problem. Most of the calls we get are at about two or three in the morning when people are on a down. The two things we don’t give them is drugs or money. But we can give them food, liquid if they’re dehydrated and we can listen. At other times we can help them sort out court problems, warrants, Aids tests.’ He wasn’t afraid to be controversial in his interviews either. ‘The fact is that there is a good side to most drugs. If you’re telling people it’s all bad they are bound to start looking up to people who look as though they are having a great time. The issue is that there is a downside as well and to show people that side and make it clear to them where they are likely to end up,’ he said.
It was the perfect ruse to cover his tracks, for Francis was dealing in heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine, ecstasy and weed. He was, in fact, one of the biggest dealers in the Midlands. He also had a job which paid him £21,000 a year from the public purse, which he drove to in a Mercedes convertible worth £50,000. He also changed his BMW every year. He kept a beautiful mistress who earned a living from high-class prostitution; a house in Jamaica in his mother’s name which resembled the White House; several properties in Nottingham, including a three-bedroomed house in Compton Acres, a stone’s throw from his Meadows home turf and kitted out with the latest Bang & Olufsen hi-fi; a flat in the appropriately named Francis Street in Hyson Green; diamonds drilled into his teeth and gold dripping from his fingers. He was sitting on anti-drug and child prostitution problem-solving panels alongside the likes of Nottingham South MP Alan Simpson and former Chief Constable Dan Crompton and had influence over the spending of £170,000 a year from the likes of the Department of Health and other Government bodies.
Francis’s deputy at CAT, Henry Warner, was his first lieutenant in this booming drugs empire and Francis had also bought the loyalty of many of those going through the Open Doors offices, or working alongside him, by selling them gear or getting them to sell for him. He was fast becoming out of reach from the authorities, not least because he had built up a wide network of influential people who would tip him off about any investigation into his activities. And he was clever. He knew the road to power and people’s weaknesses and he exploited them ruthlessly. Each time the forces of law and order got close to him, there were people willing to help him. Some were in lowly places, like the young white ‘tampaxes’ who served him; others were in high places, some of them white, middle class individuals willing to cry racism if Francis was criticised and to say, ‘This man is a good guy, he is doing great work. We should be applauding him, not doing him down.’ Others began asking themselves: what does Dave Francis have on these people? What power did he wield over them that they felt an obligation to support him when many knew or suspected he was one of the bad guys?
So frustrated were the police by the lack of evidence against him that some even resorted to illegal tactics to try to nail him. On one occasion, an officer arranged for a stolen credit card to be placed inside Francis’s car overnight. The following day a call was made to local traffic police to pull over his vehicle. It resulted in his arrest and detention in a cell for a few hours, which enabled a warrant to be obtained to search his house and safe – which in turn helped police to gather intelligence about where Francis was keeping his money. But it was still not enough to nail him. He had to be caught red-handed if anything was to stick.
During 1997, Francis came to the attention of the local health authority after complaints were lodged by some fellow workers who had not been corrupted by his charm and wealth. They were prepared to stand up and be counted, even if it put their careers at risk. Sue Loakes and Tony Herbert were among a number of ex-workers and clients who knew what Francis was up to and could not stand to see what was happening any longer. In November 1996, they went to Nottingham Health Authority, which partially funded the crack awareness programme, to complain that Francis was actually selling large amounts of crack cocaine, heroin and weed. Not only this, some alleged he was dealing in firearms and prostitutes. He was, they said, nothing more than a charlatan who was using the CAT project as a prop to hide his drug-dealing empire. The APA launched an inquiry, but by the following March Francis had been exonerated. Worse still, he was taking retribution against those who had spoken out against him. Tony Herbert found his car vandalised and several clients who had been brave enough to speak to the inquiry received anonymous telephone threats. It was clear that dark forces were at work. How could the APA committee reject overwhelming evidence from more than twenty professional workers whose clients were on the frontline, witnessing Francis in action every day? Most had never even met each other and so could clearly not be tainted by association.
When material started to leak out to the Guardian newspaper, it became clear just how much power Francis had accumulated. Among those speaking up for him were MP Alan Simpson and the chairman of the APA, Sir Geoffrey Errington. Sir Geoffrey told the Guardian that not a scrap of real evidence had emerged which could be backed up and that critics were tainting Francis’s character unfairly. ‘He’s a good guy as far as we are concerned and he is a jolly worthwhile employee,’ said Sir Geoffrey. ‘We couldn’t find a spark of evidence to back up any of the allegations. These things were rumours. I don’t think we have been fooled.’ Simpson also spoke to the inquiry, telling them Francis was the victim of malicious gossip at the hands of people who had their own agenda. Staff that had made the allegations about Francis were threatened with legal action by the APA if they were repeated. However, by 1997, faced with a particularly damaging article in the Guardian which ‘outed’ him as a drug dealer, Francis decided to resign from Open Doors. Nottinghamshire Police meantime had launched a secret operation against him, convinced there was truth in the allegations and determined this time to nail him.
By 1998, Operation Odin was well underway. A meeting took place in a car park off the M1. In a car were two detectives from the Major Crime Unit and they were waiting for a man who would help unlock some of Francis’s secrets. The silent stranger who greeted the two officers looked more like a down-and-out than the specialist operator that he was. He got into the back of the car with stealth-like ease, the two detectives jumping with a start. The mystery man sported a tattoo on his wrist, a snake entwined around a dagger. The symbol could mean only one thing to the detectives babysitting him: he was either a serving, or former, Special Forces operative. The car weaved its way back towards Nottingham, taking the ring road past the Queen’s Medical Centre
and out towards leafy West Bridgford.
Detectives knew that Francis would be out of the way for only a few hours. He had taken his mistress to Luton Airport, where she would make one of her regular flights to Switzerland. Officers had also carried out research on all Francis’s properties to determine which one was most likely to provide the wealth of intelligence they needed to bust him – and what sort of security they needed to bypass. They already knew they would have to get past a highly sophisticated alarm system. Then there was the small problem of the Doberman guard dog. Their target was his home in Maythorn Close, Compton Acres. Their plan was to break in, immobilise the dog temporarily and plant a device which would allow investigators to hear his conversations. It was, of course easier said than done, unless you had a bit of help from some extremely talented individuals. Arriving at their destination, the mysterious tattooed man was out of the car and up the street almost before the detectives had a chance to pull up. He disappeared around the corner. Within fifteen minutes, a call from the senior detective in charge of the operation made it clear that the man was on his way back to the car, the bug having been planted safely. These were pieces of equipment which could break down at any time. Every month the batteries had to be changed and, at the conclusion of each operation, the equipment had to be retrieved. These mysterious specialists were invaluable. ‘These were guys who could tell the type of key and lock needed for a property and any security systems to bypass with a mere glance,’ one senior Nottinghamshire officer told me. ‘They could also break into the most difficult locations and you just knew they would leave not so much as a strand of hair behind.’ In Francis’ case, detectives would eventually bug a passenger seat on a jumbo jet carrying him to Jamaica in a bid to learn more about his conversations. According to one very senior officer, this may be the only time a police force in the country has undertaken such a radical move to monitor a criminal target.
Months of surveillance work would now be undertaken, but the validity of the material coming through on the bugs would have be tested every month in order to get ongoing Home Office approval. If there was no incriminating material on the bugs, there would be a problem gaining the authority to use the devices the following month. The officers listened in as Francis briefed his foot soldiers. ‘Be very paranoid, don’t trust anybody. There are people out there who would love to destroy us so keep your eyes and ears open and don’t say anything unless you have to,’ he told them. ‘We can’t fuck around. We’ve got to be the best team, the cheapest and the quickest to get the gear out, otherwise the other crews will be on top. I don’t want us getting into a warzone with any Yardies.’
Francis’s and Henry Warner’s mobiles were bugged and every day, against the background noise of the repeated cable TV soap operas that his crew seemed to be avid fans of, they heard him organising kilo after kilo of the brown heroin. Francis was only just keeping up with demand as sales soared, partly as a consequence of the crack epidemic sweeping Nottingham. Crackheads found that one way to reduce the drop from their cocaine high was to smoke or inject heroin. Many were therefore fighting two addictions at the same time. Prostitutes, some of whom Francis was pimping, were among his best customers. The crack kept them working through the night and the ‘brown’ comforted them when they eventually got back home. It took the pain away for a brief few hours, until they woke and needed a toke on their crack pipe, starting the cycle all over again.
Francis was making extraordinary profits and the police knew it. Six officers monitored conversations round the clock from the listening post in Wilford as Francis organised his shipments. He was talking to dealers in London, mainly Nigerian contacts he had built up over the years, and was dealing with people like Ramzy Khachik, a major supplier from Leicester, who had made some of his wealth from the city’s notorious ‘hotdog wars’. Khachik would later be jailed for nineteen years for conspiracy to supply class A drugs. In addition, Francis had contacts in Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham. Meanwhile, officers on the ground were taking out Francis’s troops. A number of his key street dealers had already been taken arrested as part of Operation Odin and its forerunner, Operation Diamond Back, and he was clearly starting to feel vulnerable. That would mean, it was hoped, that Francis would have to start taking more risks and ultimately get his hands dirty, which might just result in them catching him with drugs – they could only hope for such luck
By February 1999, the end was approaching as the accumulation of material indicated that he was clearly selling heroin and cocaine on a large scale. In the final weeks of the operation more than seven kilos of heroin alone passed through Francis’ hands. After allowing four kilos to go through in less than two weeks, the team was ready to move. They picked up information through the bugs that there was to be another kilo delivery of heroin that evening coming in a hired VW Golf from south London, which Francis had had to organise himself. Better still, Francis – running out of troops he could trust or who had not been arrested – would be at his flat in Francis Street, Hyson Green, to take stock of what had come in, weigh it and help bag it up. Alongside the bugs, Nottinghamshire Police had also brought in a black undercover officer a year earlier who was so convincing he had been accepted as a trusted Yardie drug dealer by the local criminal underworld and local police officers. The pièce de résistance was that Francis’s inner sanctum had been penetrated: Nottinghamshire Police had ‘turned’ one of Francis’ loyal crew, a heroin addict they had busted during a low-key operation. The tactics that won him over were reminiscent of the TV series Life on Mars: according to one of the officers involved, he was taken to a desolate area in the dead of night by two detectives, who then retrieved a spade from the boot of their car, pulled the petrified young man from the car and told him to start digging his own grave. He later provided important information about Francis and his movements.
On 23 February, police made their move. After the VW Golf arrived carrying the heroin from London, they waited until they were sure Francis was inside his flat before they burst in. Their startled target was standing at the top of the staircase, mobile phone in one hand and thousands in cash spilling from his pockets. Shocked he may have been, but to the officers he appeared his usual confident self, almost as if it was all some silly misunderstanding. After all, he was Dave Francis, King of the Meadows, the man everyone looked up to.
Francis initially tried to make out that the drugs were nothing to do with him and that he was renting out the flat to someone who had brought the drugs in. He was already aware that he would be one of the last to face the courts out of an army of some 150 soldiers he commanded; most of them had been removed from circulation over the previous nine months by Operations Diamond Back and Odin. Nottinghamshire Police had managed to get to Francis only because he had believed his own invincibility and because they had painstakingly removed the tentacles of his operation from the foot soldiers up to the man himself by removing, brick by brick, the business pyramid which Francis oversaw. This was a tried and tested technique against large-scale drug dealers which usually resulted in the ‘main man’ being flushed out from his or her safety zone. If the tactic worked it would result in the target being left isolated; all around him the network of street dealers who had previously hidden, supported him and ultimately protected him, left in tatters. There was also the issue of the assets Francis held in various parts of the world. There was at that time no assets recovery unit to track down ill-gotten gains and, even if there had been, it would still have had to prove in court that Francis was the true holder of those assets.
It would be a further year before any kind of case came to court. In the meantime, Francis converted to the Islamic faith while in prison. It meant that he could order his own prison food and have some time on his own set aside for prayer. It could also become a useful tool in mitigation should he face conviction at Crown Court. He had used the technique once before, converting to the Christian faith while on remand previously. Nevertheless, Francis also believed he held g
ood information that he could trade with the police to reduce his sentence if he were convicted or forced to plead guilty through the weight of evidence against him. His trusted lieutenant, Warner, had already pleaded guilty at the first chance that he got, which lengthened the odds on Francis being able to squirm his way out of trouble. ‘Whenever Francis had been arrested and he knew he was in trouble he would always contact his favourite solicitor,’ said former CID head Peter Coles. ‘He would then let it be known he wanted to do a deal with the police. In reality all this meant was that he wanted us to talk him through a deal and then he would hope that he could make some use of it in the courtroom to try to sully the case against him. We got very wise to that though after a while.’
By the time he faced Nottingham Crown Court in March 2000, charged with conspiracy and possession with intent to supply class A drugs, Francis was ready to accept some guilt, but right up until his last day in court he told officers he wanted a deal. The full details of that deal are not known but Francis had planned to reveal some of the police’s covert tactics in open court, which could have damaged future operations and may have led police to considering a deal. There is also speculation that he provided information on drug consignments being awaited by other major dealers in the city. Whatever the truth, in the end Francis pleaded guilty to possessing half a kilo of heroin with intent to supply. Another charge which could potentially have added another seven years to his sentence was ordered to lie on file by Judge Dudley Bennett. Jailing him for seven years, Judge Bennett summed it all up in a sentence: ‘I have to deal with people day after day in this court who appear before me after committing crimes to fund their drug habit. Because of your involvement in the past with trying to stop all that in your work, you more than anybody else should have known the misery of people who had become addicted.’
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