A serving police officer and her husband masterminded a conspiracy to fly drugs into prisons with drones to bankroll their luxury lifestyle, it can be revealed.
Mother-of-three Clare Davenport, then a detective constable with Staffordshire Police, and her husband Peter King worked ‘in tandem to make as much money as possible’ by dropping parcels of contraband into high-security prisons between 2021 and 2022.
Police identified 25 drone drops at prisons across the Midlands with parcels containing street drugs including heroin, cannabis and spice worth tens of thousands of pounds, which were ordered directly by inmates.
King, 52, pleaded guilty to smuggling drugs into prisons last month, while Davenport, 51, who told a co-conspirator she was ‘afraid of the consequences for my police pension if I get caught’, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of obtaining payment from prisoners and their families.
Today their two accomplices, ‘right-hand man’ Mervyn Foster, 45, and drone pilot Kent George, 63, were found guilty of their roles in the drug-smuggling ring following a trial at Coventry Crown Court.
Following the verdicts, Judge Richard Bond revealed in court that Davenport ‘relatively recently had a baby, which causes some concerns and difficulties when it comes to the sentencing exercise’.
He added: ‘She has been sacked by the police simply on the basis of those text messages that she sent of a racist nature – it comes as no surprise to me that that is the way she was dealt with.
‘We do not want people like her serving with the police.’
The trial heard the couple had ‘million-pound houses and an impressive lifestyle’, with neighbours telling the Mail they ‘lapped up a life of luxury’, enjoying overseas holidays, a fleet of luxury cars and visits to fancy restaurants.
Davenport left the force in April 2023 after officers investigating the drone-smuggling ring found racist messages she had exchanged with Foster, which Staffordshire Police used to initiate gross misconduct proceedings. She resigned before she could be sacked.
Clare Davenport and her husband Peter King worked ‘in tandem to make as much money as possible’ by dropping parcels of contraband into prison between 2021 and 2022
Davenport was a serving officer with Staffordshire Police for the duration of the conspiracy, only resigning when police found racist messages on her phone
She was accused by a co-conspirator of threatening to ‘have him fitted up as a paedophile’ and get his children taken away from him if he did not fly drones for them
The detective and her husband were accused by Foster of blackmailing him into taking part in their conspiracy by threatening to use their police access to have him killed or framed as a paedophile if he did not comply.
He alleged King told him ‘he was best mates with a firearms officer and he’d get shot and make it look like an accident’, the trial heard.
Davenport was said to have threatened to ‘have him fitted up as a paedophile’ and get his children taken away from him and he claimed she said she ‘had set up loads of Muslims for the same thing’.
But a jury rejected that Foster, who was previously jailed in 2018 for smuggling drugs into prison by drone, was acting under duress, finding him guilty of two counts of conspiracy to convey banned items into prison and acquiring criminal property.
Davenport and King were married and living in their £800,000 family home near Wolverhampton while overseeing the drug-smuggling ring, although they are now understood to have separated, with Davenport dropping the surname King for her maiden name.
The drone drops began on July 12 2021, with 25 in total taking place until February 27 2022, including seven in December 2021 alone, at prisons including Category B HMP Gartree, Leicestershire, and Category C HMP Onley in Warwickshire.
Although King was said by prosecutors to be in charge, Foster was ‘the heart of the operation’, with experience flying drones into jails and his contacts among the prison population.
Prisoners placed orders via text to Foster, with payments reaching thousands of pounds then taken from their family and friends on the outside via bank transfer, including to Davenport.
The packages were then flown over the walls of the prison and dropped into the exercise yard wrapped in astroturf.
One package, recovered by a prison officer patrolling the grounds in August 2021, contained cannabis with a prison value of £15,300, heroin with a prison value of £22,400, as well as mobile phones, sim cards, tobacco, wifi dongles and chargers.
Spice, the synthetic cannabinoids infamous for reducing users to a zombie-like state, was also repeatedly flown into prisons ‘impregnated into paper sheets’.
Despite being a serving police detective, Davenport was fully aware of the operation, the trial heard.
‘Peter and Clare King at the time were husband and wife acting in tandem with a joint desire to make as much money as they could from their criminal activity,’ Foster’s defence barrister Rajinder Gill said.
In one text exchange between Davenport and Foster, she even expressed concern that her police pension could be imperilled by their conspiracy.
She told Foster: ‘I’ve got pension tension. I’m afraid of the consequences for my police pension if I get caught.’
Police identified 25 drone drops at prisons across the Midlands with parcels containing street drugs including at HMP Gartree in Leicestershire (pictured)
Several drops were made by drone into the grounds of HMP Onley, a Category C prison near Rugby in Warwickshire
One neighbour of the couple in Cross Green, near Wolverhampton, told the Mail that Davenport was always ’splashing the cash’ and claimed she could only afford a lavish lifestyle because her Kiwi husband was ‘making lots of money’ as a business entrepreneur.
The woman said: ‘I knew Clare was a cop with Staffordshire Police and she seemed very nice but I never got to know her well because she was always busy working or off on foreign holidays.
’She has a couple of kids and often the whole family would be off. I once said to her: “Blimey, they must be paying you well in the police force” and she said the pay was lousy and it was all down to her husband who was making lots of money as a businessman.
‘Clare was always smartly dressed in designer style clothes and loved going out when she wasn’t working – she liked nice restaurants, not pub grub, and they were always splashing the cash.
’Her lifestyle seemed luxurious and very enviable, she seemed to have it all. There were always decent cars parked up on the drive, including a flashy bronze-gold BMW.
’She must be so ashamed.’
Police were eventually able to close the net through a combination of phone mast data and the defendants’ cars being identified by automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology.
The couple were first arrested in March 2022, but it was not until the following month that Staffordshire Police initiated disciplinary proceedings for gross misconduct against Davenport.
The force was only able to initiate the misconduct probe because officers investigating the drone-smuggling conspiracy found racist messages she had exchanged with her husband and Foster.
It was also discovered King had called in sick on her behalf when she was abroad with no intention of attending work.
Giving evidence, Foster claimed he had been under duress from both Davenport and King to take part in the conspiracy.
He said: ‘The first thing she said was she was going to plant my DNA at the scene of a crime, she threatened to take my kids away from me, she does a lot of grooming cases and she knows I don’t like paedophiles.
‘She was going to plant my DNA at the scene of a crime, she told me it wasn’t the first time she had done this and she had set up loads of Muslims for the same thing. I thought she would do the same for me.
‘Pete told me he was best mates with a firearms officer and he’d get me shot and make it look like an accident.’
Davenport retired from the force on April 12 2023. The chief constable of Staffordshire Police concluded on August 3 2023 that she would have been dismissed if she had not already retired. She was barred from working for the police in future.
King pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to convey banned items into prison and acquiring criminal property on August 27, Davenport pleaded guilty the following day to acquiring criminal property and George was found guilty today of two counts of conspiracy to convey banned items into prison and acquiring criminal property.
King, Foster and George were all remanded in custody, while Davenport has been granted bail ahead of sentencing.
They will be sentenced at a date to be fixed.
