A whistle-blower claimed two alleged gang leaders escaped because of an alleged power struggle inside the police investigation team.
An explosion of gang violence characterised by an escalating series of tit-for-tat attacks between rival outfits tarred Salford in 2015. The violence culminated in the shooting dead of Salford 'Mr Big' Paul Massey.
Massey was gunned down outside his house by Mark Fellows. Fellows, nicknamed 'The Iceman', appeared at Liverpool Crown Court in 2018 where he was charged and later convicted of the murder of Massey and John Kinsella.
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Kinsella, a friend of Massey who was called a "rock" to the Massey family following his murder, was killed near his home in Rainhill in May 2018 while walking with his partner. Fellows received a life sentence for the murder of Massey and Kinsella - while Fellows' childhood friend Steven Boyle was also convicted of murdering the Liverpool man.
The story of the violent war between the A Team, allied to Massey, and the Anti-A Team is familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of Greater Manchester's recent criminal history. But the alleged power struggle inside the investigation team at the time is less documented.
Now, a tribunal covered by the Manchester Evening News has heard a string of allegations from retired officer Pete Jackson, 59, that he was repeatedly "undermined" as he battled to bring gangsters and gunmen to justice as part of Greater Manchester Police's Operation Leopard.
He claimed a senior officer went behind his back to Northern Ireland to ask paramilitary mediators to speak to the warring gangsters he was trying to put behind bars. And he claimed the way he was side-lined meant two alleged gang leaders have escaped justice - Stephen Britton, a man named as leader of the A Team in successive trials, and Michael 'Cazza' Carroll, named as the boss of the splinter group known as the Anti A Team.
At the time of the A Team shootings Pete Jackson was the head of GMP's Major Incident Team. And the whistle-blower alleged his namesake boss - Russ Jackson - then Head of Criminal Investigation, didn't like him. He wrote in a statement: "Russ Jackson was a highly ambitious senior officer who disliked me intently for what I had done as a whistle-blower...all covered with a veneer of false pleasantry."
For the last fortnight, Russ Jackson has been forced to answer these and other allegations after being called to give evidence at Pete Jackson's on-going employment tribunal in Manchester where the whistle-blower argues he was side-lined and passed over for promotion because he made "protected 'disclosures" alleging corruption inside the force.
Russ Jackson denied he created a "culture of fear" and countered that his namesake struggled to work "collaboratively". The whistle-blower also claimed his then boss didn't take the explosion of violence between Salford gangsters seriously at first, seeing them as "just street rats" - and was "dismissive" when he suggested they were more significant than that.
As media and public interest in the shootings increased, he alleged Russ Jackson suddenly said he "wanted 20 search warrants executing". The whistle-blower alleged in evidence before the tribunal that the demand was unwarranted by any evidence or intelligence and motivated by "Russ wanting the force to be seen to have taken action".
The whistle-blower told the tribunal, among other allegations, that two members of A Team were arrested in Spain after reports of an imminent attack on the leader of the Anti-A team. He claimed the investigative team came "under pressure" to prepare a file of evidence for the expected extradition of the members of the A Team they had captured, but Russ Jackson suggested the matter should be left to the Spanish authorities.
He described the "mischievous" instigation of an internal review of the investigation as part of an effort to force him out of his role and undermine him as someone who was in the process of making whistleblowing claims against GMP. When he challenged the author, force review officer Martin Bottomley, during a meeting, he was said to have been told: "Well, you do piss people off Pete."
Pete Jackson was called to a meeting on March 30, 2016, and told by an assistant chief constable, Rebekah Sutcliffe, that he was being replaced in overall charge of the case by another officer, and told that he would be his deputy, because he had been "obstructive and uncooperative" with the internal review. He said: "I was hated by senior officers because of what I had done in making protected disclosures." He complained, and ACC Sutcliffe was said to have quickly reversed the decision.
He claimed relationships with the Spanish police and judiciary "fell apart" when he was finally removed from being in overall charge of the case later in 2016, a decision he said "allowed one of Manchester's most dangerous criminals to escape justice". He said it was "notable" that neither of the two alleged leaders of the gangs had ever been charged - "which I believe was due to my sudden removal".
The whistle-blower went on sick leave and retired from policing in February 2017 after 31 years in the police. The tribunal continues.
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