Police on Steroids

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Factual: Health & Wellbeing

BBC Radio 4 - Police on Steroids

How big a problem is steroid use in the police?

The warning is that the UK is 'sleep walking' into a steroid addiction crisis. Is this the case in the police?

WARNING: This episode contains disturbing audio from the very start as well as bad language, offensive comments and descriptions of a sexual nature. It also refers to drug taking and dealing. 


The shaky mobile phone footage was harrowing. Filmed by his neighbour, Andre Moura can be heard screaming for help, telling the police they are hurting him and begging to speak to his children. He’d been sprayed with CS gas - a shocked eyewitness describes watching a police officer kneeing him several times.

In police bodycam footage of the same incident, PC Chris Bolger is heard telling the warehouse worker he won’t win “this fight” and that the officer would, “put him to sleep”.  Soon afterwards the dad of four suffered a massive heart attack in the back of a police van and died

Late last year, the footage was played to an inquest jury tasked with determining how Andre had died. But what the jury weren’t told was that the police officer and keen body builder accused of attacking Andre had been convicted of selling steroids and resigned before he could be sacked by Greater Manchester Police.

Disturbed by the case, campaigner Gail Hadfield-Grainger sets out for Radio 4 out to investigate whether this was an isolated case, or if it could be symptomatic of a wider steroid issue amongst the Police 

With in-depth interviews, Gail explores why some police officers feel they have to take anabolic steroids, if addiction to muscle building substance is putting them at the mercy of criminal dealers, and whether “Roid Rage” could be risking lives by causing some officers to use excessive force in high tension interactions with the public.

Gail also explores whether it could be fuelling sexual crime by police officers and speaks to one expert who says he believes, when it comes to Anabolic Steroids the authorities may have “fallen asleep at the wheel”

Presenter: Gail Hadfield-Grainger
Producer: Nicola Dowling

Image: Gail Hadfield-Grainger and Dave Crosland/BBC

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