Q&A: Hunting people smugglers & how realistic is 'Legends'?
5/18/202630 min
'Stopping the Boats': a task which has now proved beyond multiple governments, with over 200,000 people crossing the Channel to reach the UK in the past eight years. But who are the people smugglers running this illegal trade? How do police attempt to catch the gangs who put people's lives at risk almost every day? Neil explains why law enforcement agencies from the UK and other countries have found it so difficult to tackle this problem, and Andy reveals why journalists sometimes seem to have more success in tracking down these people smugglers than the police.
Later, they discuss 'Legends', the new streaming hit which tells the stories of customs officers going undercover to tackle drug gangs in the 90s. Is the show realistic? Just how difficult is it for police, border force, or even journalists to go undercover? Plus, Andy & Neil unpick why there has been so little coverage of the investigations into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson since their arrests, and they also reveal who first had the idea for The Crime Agents...
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAndy Hughes· Host0:00
[digital music] This is a Global Player original podcast. I spoke to several asylum seekers who'd come in in the previous weeks, and I asked all of them the same question: "Did anyone ask you who the people smugglers were?" And all of them, all of them said no.
Neil Basu· Host0:17
Reflects very badly on policing- Hmm ... and law enforcement and the National Crime Agency about their ability to hunt down, track, identify, and eventually prosecute people.
Andy Hughes· Host0:26
You can't get any access, you can't get any intel without someone on the inside, effectively, who you as a journalist, you are then employing them.
Neil Basu· Host0:34
They are 90% of the time doing it for money, or they're doing it to take out competition. They're not doing it because they're trying to save their country.
Andy Hughes· Host0:42
[gentle music] The Crime Agents. Hello, and welcome to the Q&A episode of The Crime Agents with me, crime journalist Andy Hughes.
Neil Basu· Host0:50
And me, the ex-cop Neil Basu.
Andy Hughes· Host0:52
One of your, uh, clips that went out on Instagram this week, it went a bit viral. I don't know if you know. Well, you wouldn't know, 'cause you're not on social media.
Neil Basu· Host1:00
I wouldn't know. I'm not on that.
Andy Hughes· Host1:01
It's the one where we, we criticized, or you criticized Zak Polanski for, um- Ouch ... retweeting a post. So you got all his followers coming after you. Uh, actually, you also got a lot of support from people saying- Well, well luckily- "Quite right" ...
Neil Basu· Host1:13
he d- he didn't decide to go on a news show and talk about me in the same way he talked about Sir Mark.
Andy Hughes· Host1:17
[laughs] Yeah, well.
Neil Basu· Host1:19
I, I, I'd have enjoyed doing that again this week.
Andy Hughes· Host1:21
Well, there we go. We'll, we'll, we'll leave that one for now. [laughs] Um, let's get cracking, shall we, Neil? Let's start with Steve on email. "Last week, journalists unmasked one of the key