OBSERVATION VAN MATTERS, January, 1986:-
This was a No.3 Regional Crime squad operation, supported by police officers from South Yorkshire police. TWO South Yorkshire Police CID officers claimed they were present inside an observation van outside some target premises in the Monkspring area of Barnsley, at 5.20pm, on the 22nd January, 1986, when they claim they observed the arrival at the scene of a stolen motor vehicle, containing two suspects, a driver of the vehicle, and a passenger. Both these CID officers (DC Caulfield, and a DS Shepherd) claimed that at this time, they identified the driver of the vehicle as 'yours truly', and that this mans passenger, was identical looking, other than one of the suspects was four inches taller than the other one...
I was arrested from home in High Green, Sheffield and taken to Barnsley police station, interviewed, and charged with a series of offences in connection with, the aforementioned alleged sighting...
I spent over five and a half years on remand before the case came to court at Barnsley...
During this five and a half months, I was whisked away to Huddersfield police station on the 19th March 1986, and without being interviewed about anything at all, I was taken into court after being charged with an offence of conspiracy, to commit over 500 individual burglaries throughout the north of England, with a person, or persons, unknown...
Can you please try and picture this in your minds eye, it beggars belief that I should be whisked away from South Yorkshire, and taken to Huddersfield (West Yorkshire), and without any interview, that I be charged with conspiring with a person, or persons unknown, to commit a series of 500 burglaries throughout the north of England, and that although I was already in custody on remand as a result of the observation van evidence from 22nd January 1986, the prosecuting authorities put me before the court at Huddersfield, and sought to apply to remand me in custody pending trial on these latest allegations...
I later found out, that the vehicle subject of the South Yorkshire allegations (observation van matter) had been stolen during a burglary in West Yorkshire, and that on the very day that I was brought to Huddersfield to be charged with a blanket conspiracy charge involving 500 burglaries supposedly carried out throughout the north of England, that the No.3 Regional Crime Squad, and the serious crime squad had instigated (19th March, 1986) an operational investigated named, 'OPERATION SWAG', which included widescale raids at many suspects homes in different parts of the country, including my home where I had previously been living in at High Green, Sheffield, prior to my arrest from there, on the 30th August 1986...
Lo and behold, unbeknown to me, on that day, my previous home address (aforementioned) was raided by a task force, and a gold gentlemans wrist watch was apparently found on a bedside cabinet in a bedroom where I had normally been sleeping on occasions prior to my arrest a couple of months beforehand - this gold watch had not been there when police came to arrest me on the 30th January 1986, when I was taken into custody for the so called observation van matters...
Anyway...
to cut a long story short, my solicitor managed to get the Magistrates in Huddersfield to grant technical bail, on the basis that I was already on remand in South Yorkshire, and that if I was remanded in custody on these latest allegations, it would create a logistical nightmare for the prison authorities who would have to produce me to Barnsley court for the observation matters, and produce me to Huddersfield courts in relation to the latest West Yorkshire allegations...
I was therefore, granted bail in the West Yorkshire Matters, but I continued to be remanded in custody on the observation van matters...
Prosecution had mentioned that both cases were hopefully going to be joined together at a later date, because the two investigations involved the same police officers, and each investigation overlapped the other, or vice versa...
