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What The Police Didn't Do Next
Misreading the
signs
Finding themselves able to prove Geoff was lying to them about his
knowledge of the lorry, the cops did little to investigate whether there was
actually any evidence that pointed to his involvement.
Through looking at his mobile phone (which he had helpfully brought with
him when he drove back into the lion’s den to be arrested) they would be
able to tell who he had been talking to. Maybe there would be some contact
between him and the driver?
But other than that, nothing. Nothing else to check whether this man
without a solicitor is telling the truth when he says he didn’t know there
was £77 kilos of cocaine on the lorry. No interviews with any of the 20 or so
people who worked at the yard where the drugs were unloaded.
No attempt to check whether Geoff was telling the truth when he said
there was nothing unusual about a foreign lorry being in the yard. They are
in there all the time, the gates at the yard are never allowed to be shut,
this is a legal requirement because the gas board has to have 24hr access.
So it is an open yard; a well known parking area for trucks.
No attempt to look through Geoff’s books to search for any financial
irregularities. [A later audit of Geoff’s finances after he was convicted
found no money that wasn’t legitimately accounted for].No meaningful attempt to check out the Mick Barnes lead [Detective
Constable Samantha Cailes said she had Googled his name but could not find
him. "What would I have asked him anyway?" she said to the jury.
Their investigation was so cursory, their knowledge of the yard so
limited, Detective Constable Mark Baxter said in the dock there were
no signs in the yard requesting no overnight parking written in three
foreign languages – there are signs, they could be seen in his own surveillance footage.
What makes this all the more surprising is that during Geoff’s interview,
the self-same DC Baxter three times appeared to indicate even he didn’t
believe Geoff was involved.
Firstly: "Now, whether you knew about the cocaine or whatever, I think
you would have known that something was going on in your yard last
night."
Then later: "Because you might have thought that something was going to
be unloaded from that lorry, but you didn’t now what."
And then: "Now, I’m not saying for one minute that you knew that 77 kilos
of cocaine were going to be unloaded from that lorry."
Even having said all of that, once the cops had established that Geoff
had lied about the van driver, their investigation into his innocence lasted
about as long as it takes to scroll through the memory of a mobile phone.
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