In 2015, an orgy of gang violence erupted in Salford, characterised by an escalating series of tit-for-tat attacks between rival outfits which culminated in the shooting dead of Salford 'Mr Big' Paul Massey.
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, as it struggled to keep a lid on the violence, is less well known. Now, a tribunal 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 GMP's Operation Leopard.
He claims that 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 claims the way he was sidelined meant that 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.
It was one of a series of complaints be brought to the police watchdog about GMP leaders, including concerns about the way the force kept and then secretly destroyed body parts of Harold Shipman’s victims without telling the families.
At the time of the A Team shootings Pete Jackson was the head of...
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