Worcester MC armed robbery 1980

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'Fair cop. I can hardly say I'm here to post a letter!'
https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/25 ... bery-1980/

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IT was like something straight out of The Sweeney, the nation’s favourite cops and robbers TV drama in the 1970s.

In the dead of a January night in 1980, an armed gang from Liverpool broke into Worcester’s postal sorting office intent on robbery. But, having been tipped off, the police were lying in wait and mayhem ensued.

Mistaking a broom handle for a shotgun in the dark, a police marksman fired, a robber fell injured and, as his accomplices were rounded up, one of them quipped: “Fair cop. I can hardly say I’m here to post a letter!”


Worcester’s old sorting office in Sansome Walk, scene of the attempted robbery in January 1980. It is now on Shire Business Park in Wainwright Road (Image: Newsquest)

On the evening of Sunday, January 13, 1980, John Badger, a postal worker for 19 years, clocked on the night shift at Worcester sorting office, then in Sansome Walk, expecting it to be much like any other. He was in for the shock of his life.


Post office worker John Badger who was thrown to the floor with a gun at his head (Image: Newsquest)

At around 10.15pm the doors suddenly burst open and in charged six armed robbers wearing balaclavas. Within seconds John was on the floor with a pistol pointed at his head. Then from behind sorting tables, machinery and other assorted hiding places emerged the police.

A pitched battle ensued around the conveyor belts, bins and mail bags as pick axe handles and iron bars were swung, blows were given and taken and a gun was fired by a police marksman in an observation gallery, hitting one of the gang in the shoulder.

John was later to say: “It was like Dodge City on a bad night.”

Four of the six robbers were arrested inside the sorting office where a safe contained more than £100,000 in cash and securities while two managed to flee the building, crashing straight through a glass window and out into the road. One, who had broken his ankle, was found shortly after by a police dog which tracked his scent to the nearby Padmore Street Midland Red depot and on to a parked bus. The man must have realised it was not his night as he tried to hide under the vehicle’s back row of seats with a hairy Alsatian barking at him up close and personal.

The sixth member of the gang disappeared and although two years later police arrested 26-year-old David Hughes when he came before Hereford Crown Court a jury found him not guilty.

The trial of the other five defendants, which began at Worcester Crown Court before Mr Justice Drake in February 1981, involved one of the biggest security operations ever mounted by police in the Midlands. The men were brought to the city under heavy armed escort from Birmingham’s Winson Green prison. Armed officers and dog handlers completely surrounded the Shirehall and every car in the vicinity was stopped and the driver asked to give proof of identity. Other officers searched everyone entering the building while the entrances and exits to No 1 Court were guarded by armed detectives.

The case was later transferred to Birmingham Crown Court before Mr Justice Mais where the gang all pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary and received jail terms totalling 50 years. The saga gets a mention in Worcester Civic Society’s History and Heritage Calendar for events in Worcester in January over the centuries and understandably most others pale in comparison.