West Midlands Serious Crime Squad

The West Midlands Serious Crime Squad was a police unit in the English West Midlands which operated from 1974 to 1989. It was disbanded after an investigation into allegations of incompetence and abuse of power on the part of some of the squad's members. Some of this misconduct resulted in wrongful convictions, including the high-profile case of the Birmingham Six. The sister Regional Crime Squad, based in Bilston, was responsible for the investigation of the Bridgewater Four.

At least 40 convictions failed in the 1980s as a result of probable malpractice, including tampering with evidence. As cases began to regularly collapse in the late 1980s, pressure mounted to investigate the squad; Clare Short raised the issue in Parliament in January 1989. The Birmingham Six convictions were overturned in 1991. A series of other, lower-profile convictions based on the squad's investigations were overturned on appeal, including the cases of George Glen Lewis, Keith Twitchell and (on 17 October 2014) Martin Foran, who had been wrongly convicted in 1978 of four counts of robbery. By January 2017, 60 appellants had had their convictions overturned. Over 100 cases collapsed or were overturned on appeal.

The squad was shut down by Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear in August 1989, and the West Yorkshire Police was asked by the Police Complaints Authority to investigate the squad's activities since 1986. The Birmingham Six and Bridgewater Four cases were out of scope, although there was staff crossover with the regional squad. The West Yorkshire Police published a 1994 report leading to disciplinary action against seven officers, but recommended against prosecution for lack of evidence. Ten officers avoided disciplinary action by resigning or retiring early, and around 100 received advice about police procedures. Director of Public Prosecutions Barbara Mills agreed with the report and did not attempt to prosecute any officers, for which she was widely criticised.