When police kill: An interview with Britain’s most controversial police marksman - Part 1

04/18/21 • 30 min

For 25 years, police ‘top shot’ Tony Long served in Scotland Yard’s elite specialist firearms unit, becoming Britain’s most lethal police marksman (and at one point facing trial for murder over a split-second decision to shoot). In Part One of a no-holds-barred interview with Daily Mail crime writer Stephen Wright, Long gives an insider’s view of what led up to the moment two colleagues shot innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes seven times in the head in the wake of the July 2005 terror attacks (and why although the Met was fined over the catastrophic operation, the officers who gunned him down never faced any criminal charges).

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The night the Krays moved into my house (after shooting dead a rival gangster)

The night the Krays moved into my house (after shooting dead a rival gangster) After shooting dead a rival gangster in full view of drinkers in an East End pub, the Kray twins took over a young man's family home for two weeks as they hid from the law. Award-winning crime writer Stephen Wright talks to David Teale, whose new book, ‘Surviving the Krays’, tells the story of how he met the notorious gangsters aged 17, suffered a brutal sex attack by Ronnie, was then jailed for three years after being ‘fitted up’, and how his testimony helped to ensure the Kray twins were themselves locked up for murder in 1969 (but not before the brothers sowed the seeds of unimaginable tragedy in Teale’s own life).

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Licensed to kill: An interview with Britain’s most controversial police marksman - Part 2

Police marksman Tony Long was dubbed ‘the Met’s very own serial killer’ by a senior officer after shooting three men dead, including two security van robbers gunned down in seconds in a hail of bullets. In the second part of an interview with award-winning crime writer Stephen Wright, Long describes how he shot gangster Azelle Rodney dead in a car, wrongly believing Rodney was reaching for a Mac-10 submachine gun - and faced trial for alleged murder at the Old Bailey over the killing. Long also explains why he had little doubt he would be acquitted.

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