Undercover football hooligan was sent to work above police station in ‘stupid’ mistake
Former undercover football hooligan James Bannon claimed he was sent to work above a police station during his early years in the force.
Bannon was part of a covert police sting during the 1980s looking to infiltrate the football hooligan firms that brought shame, anarchy and violence to British football. He was geared with the task of infiltrating ‘The Millwall Bushwackers’ – revered for being one of the fiercest hooligan firms at the time.
The daunting task had landed him in many dangerous brawls with rival hooligan firms across the country. However, things could have been even worse for him as a “f***ing thick and stupid” mistake saw him commissioned to work above a police station when he initially started working as an undercover hooligan.
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“Because the Metropolitan Police were f***ing thick and stupid we were working above a police station in Brockley for the first six months,” Bannon said on the Anything Goes with James English podcast.
“It was like ‘what the f*** are you doing? All of our targets are local to the area. We can’t do the work here’.”
Fortunately for him, Bannon did not get spotted in and around the police station by the firms he was embedding himself into. However, there was one terrifying situation that saw him and a colleague be subject to a hooligans’ inquisition.
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(Image: Corbis via Getty Images)
“We got fronted one day. The sergeant let something slip that he shouldn’t have done and told them where we were working,” Bannon added, when asked if their cover was ever blown. “I said ‘I had a house I was doing up with a girlfriend at the time and was doing the work on it’ so we used that as cover.
“They [the Millwall firm] went down to see us to take us out to lunch and obviously we weren’t there and the roofer said ‘I don’t know who the f*** you are talking about, never heard of them’. So we got confronted in the pub that weekend as to ‘who the f*** are you’.
“We had two options, run away which was not an option because there were too many people and only one exit and there were six people between me and the exit so I just went on the defensive.”
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