Bent Coppers. The idea of police investigating police still has the power to shock, but back

in the 60s, it was unimaginable. An anti-corruption police unit would never even have been set

up if it wasn't for a remarkable groundbreaking investigation carried out by the Times.

On Saturday, November 29, 1969, breaking all sorts of conventions, the Times ran a story

under the headline, bribes, threats, planted jellic night.

It detailed an investigation into corrupt police officers in the metropolitan police.

This is an unhappy story written with legal advice and without pleasure. It's an account of corruption,

greed, cynicism and injustice and is likely to destroy the careers of its principal characters,

three seasoned detectives, two of them from Scotland Yard.

That's Julian Mounter, one of the two journalists behind the investigation,

reading from their report. It also exhibits an unusual courage in an inarticulate young man with

an unadmirable criminal record for dishonesty, who agreed to play a lonely game of decoy among men

of superior intelligence, experience and resource, whom he'd come to regard as the opposition.

The police, it will lose him friends and win him enemies.

The report caused a storm. The allegations were shocking, but so were the cast of characters.

The police were held in such high regard at the time that the article started with almost an

apology, a story written without pleasure. So how did the Times uncover the original scandal

of corrupt police officers? And what happened when they published their explosive evidence?

You're listening to stories of our Times from the Times and the Sunday Times. I'm Manvin

Rana. Today, corrupt cops and a Times expose the true story behind line of duty.

Across the country, millions of people gathered around their TV screens last night

to watch the series finale of line of duty. If you were one of them, or even if you weren't,

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