A former Scotland Yard detective who was the inspiration for hit show Prime Suspect fought back tears as she recalled how ‘everybody’ left her police canteen when she walked in after suspending a suspected bent officer.
Former Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Malton, 70, was speaking in new BBC documentary series Bent Coppers.
The three-episode series tells the story of institutionalised corruption in the Metropolitan and City of London police in the 1970s.
Ms Malton retired from the Met in 1997 after a 30-year career before going on to advise producers of police television shows.
Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante spoke to Ms Malton for hours to create no-nonsense officer DCI Jane Tennison.
The character was portrayed by Helen Mirren in the long-running show before La Plante released a book of the same name.
Speaking in the final Bent Coppers episode, which airs tonight, she told how ‘everybody just stood up and walked out’ after she entered the police canteen following the suspension of a fellow officer suspected of planting drugs on suspects.
Former Scotland Yard detective Jackie Malton, who was the inspiration for hit show Prime Suspect, fought back tears as she recalled how ‘everybody’ left her police canteen when she walked in after suspending a suspected bent officer
Malton, who served at West End Central police station in London’s West End, was among several former officers who spoke in the show about serious corruption.
Tonight’s episode delves into how corrupt officers turned a blind eye to high-profile robberies in the 1970s in return for cuts of the ill-gotten gains.
Last week’s show shed light on members of the Met running a ‘protection racket’ covering sex shops in London’s Soho in the 1970s.
Speaking about her experience, Ms Malton said there was a ‘sense of belonging’ in the force which was ‘so powerful’, making it difficult for any officer to speak out about wrongdoing.
‘If you’re on the kind of the outside of all of that and you kind of challenge it, it’s crushing,’ she said.
‘You just get crushed. When I was posted to West End Central, there was one particular officer, it was alleged was going on drugs raids and planting drugs on people.
Ms Malton, 70, was speaking in new BBC documentary series Bent Coppers. She is pictured above as a young officer in the 1970s
‘And that reported to me, this officer was suspended and investigated and went to court. That whole process was life defining.
‘I remember walking into Western Central canteen and everybody just stood up and walked out. You were seen as the baddy.
‘You were the seen as the one that had done the wrong thing. That feeling of isolation. There was just nowhere to go.’
The former officer then broke down as she said the experience was the ‘toughest thing’.
‘Its madness because I’ve dealt with it… it’s just something that you know you’re vilified for doing something that was right,’ she said.
‘I wanted them to say “you did the right thing Jackie, well done”, they said the opposite to that.
‘But that feeling of wanting to belong to this huge organisation and wanting them to like me for it, was the pain that it caused because they didn’t.
‘They didn’t respect me for it, they didn’t like me for it. And that’s what hurt.’
Her new comments came after she featured in last week’s show, which revealed how the commander of the Met’s prestigious Flying Squad was corrupt.
The officer, Kenneth Drury, took payments from and went on holiday with pornographer Jimmy Humphreys.
Ms Malton said: ‘If you are a commander in the Met and you are corrupt there’s a massive linear structure going down and down and down and then out.
‘And therefore if you’ve got corruption at the top of the organisation at that rank, it’s a very very powerful position to be in.’
During her career, Ms Malton served in departments including the Flying Squad, the Murder Squad and Fraud Squad after joining the force in 1967.
She said in a previous interview that female officers were then expected to only work on crimes which affected women and children.
However, she said female officers were allowed to work alongside men after the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, which ‘changed everything’, she added.
She joined the Flying Squad, a section of the Met’s serious crime branch, in December 1981.
While there, she worked on horrific murder cases and also attended the 1981 fire in Deptford, where 13 teenagers burnt to death.
She also encountered sexism and said ‘one bloke in particular’ made her life ‘hell, while others acted as if she was ‘in the way’.
Prime Suspect was first released in 1991 and ran until 2006.
Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante spoke to Ms Malton for hours to create no-actress no-nonsense DCI Jane Tennison for her novel Prime Suspect. The character was portrayed by Helen Mirren in the long-running show of the same name, which La Plante also wrote
It’s writer Lynda La Plante, based the series off of her novel of the same name. Mirren’s Jane Tennison rises to the rank of Detective Superintendent despite facing institutionalised sexism.
Ms Malton, who is openly gay, spoke to La Plante when she was researching her book and said the conversations ‘changed my life’.
She said she spent ‘hours’ chatting to the writer at her home. Then, at the next meeting, La Plante would have ‘developed this great plot’ from what the former officer had told her.
She added: ”It was strange watching the first episodes. I was afraid people would say, ‘It’s not really like that.’
‘It was also painful, because that was my experience – I suffered that prejudice, and if other women in the police say they didn’t, I say they’re liars.’
And speaking to the BBC in 2019, Ms Malton said it was ‘tough’ being openly gay in the police force in the 1970s.
She said that whilst colleagues kept their sexuality a secret, she felt it was ‘just easier to come clean’.
She added that, because she was a lesbian, she was given sex toys as presents at office parties.
