Red Tape

Red Tape: Episode 33
Thursday 25th February 2010, 21.00 to 22.00, ITV1
Repeated on ITV3 on Monday 1st March at 23:00
*Julie Graham’s first episode as Commander Lisa Kennedy*

Sergeant Jo Masters (Sally Rogers), Sergeant Callum Stone (Sam Callis) and the rest of the team are restless as they drive around waiting for a shout. They get called to a brawl outside Joshua’s night club and Stone leads his troops into the mayhem.

P.C Mel Ryder (Rhea Bailey) has to deal with an injured girl who has a stiletto stuck in her groin and is suffering critical bleeding. Stone assists her and in the mayhem orders an interfering passer by David Gresham (Philip Perry) to ‘get back’. He pushes him back several times, David goes down and on hitting the ground suffers an epileptic fit.

The team are unaware that the whole incident has been filmed on a mobile phone.

During the scuffle the club is robbed, leading Jo Masters to believe that the fight may have been started deliberately to cause a diversion from the robbery. Darrel Cooper (Aidan Kelly) is arrested on suspicion of starting the fight but is only interested in reporting the ‘assault’ by a police officer on David Gresham that he claims he witnessed.

The team believe that he is creating a smokescreen to cover up his part in the robbery.

Commander Lisa Kennedy (Julie Graham) is called in to oversee the enquiry into the alleged assault and provide support at Sun Hill for Superintendent Jack Meadows (Simon Rouse). Commander Kennedy makes it very clear that she is not happy with the situation and that the team need to be ‘media aware’ of this situation as footage from the incident has already been posted online. Stone is put on station duty whilst an enquiry is carried out.

D.S Stevie Moss (Lucy Speed) and D.C Jacob Banks (Patrick Robinson) question Andrew Gray (Tim Faraday) the owner of Joshua’s Bar about the break in. Gray claims that he has never met Darrel Cooper who started the fight. He also reveals that the CCTV from the night in question has gone missing.

Stevie believes that Darrel Cooper is almost certainly behind the robbery and believes if they can prove this then they can discredit his allegations towards Stone. Stevie discovers that Andrew Gray has been making regular payments to Darrel Cooper despite claiming never to have met him.

She believes Cooper is running an illegal debt collecting firm and that Gray knows a lot more about the robbery than he’s letting on. Stevie’s suspicions are confirmed when she finds Gray’s ‘stolen’ cheque book as well as the club’s CCTV footage in the toilets of the club.

The situation seems to be looking up for Stone when David Gresham (due to personal reasons) decides to drop criminal charges against Stone. However when Commander Kennedy and Superintendent Meadows review CCTV footage of the incident it looks as though Stone did in fact punch David Gresham and they decide that Stone will still have to face disciplinary action and is immediately suspended from duty.

THE BILL is a talkbackTHAMES production and a direct commission by ITV. This episode was written by Steve Trafford, directed by Paul Wroblewski and produced by Sylvie Boden .