Ben "Mitch" Mitchell (born 24 November 1973) was a British SO19 armed police officer and Metropolitan Police Service sergeant in London during the early 2000s.
Biography[]
Mitchell in 2004
Ben Mitchell was born in London, England on 24 November 1973 to a working-class family, and he joined the British Army at a young age in order to escape his troublesome youth. He received military training, and he later joined the Metropolitan Police Service as an SO19 armed police officer. He was an aggressive and rough officer who showed no qualms about taking down threats; in 2003, he created controversy when he shot a teenage armed robber in the back. He was found to have acted in accordance with the law, but he acquired a reputation as a trigger-happy policeman. Mitchell was suspended for a year before joining a new team in Holborn, serving under Inspector Carl Munroe. In 2004, they targeted the Collins Crew at a Bloomsbury council estate and at a gym in Shoreditch, where they came across the scene of the Shoreditch massacre; an escaping Jimmer Collins told Mitchell that he was not responsible. Mitchell later took part in the apprehension of the Latvian mobster Levi Stratov following the Stratov Metal Company shootout in Lambeth, and, after Stratov was released, Mitchell tailed him to a construction site in Finsbury. In the ensuing Finsbury construction site shootout, Mitchell rescued the missing journalist Jackie Philips, and he later saved her from an ambush by the Russian Mafia at the Holborn police station, taking her to a safehouse. She informed him that they were dealing with the "Thieves in law", an Eastern European gang who imported 30 new members with each new freight delivery in London. The Russians would later kidnap Philips once more and kill Munroe in a bombing, leaving Mitchell as the SO19 crew's leader. He tracked Skobel down to a factory, where he was engaging in an arms deal with the Yardies, and he saved Philips from the Russians and chased Skobel down to his mansion. Mitch and Eddie O'Connor worked together to wipe out the Russian mobsters, and, after O'Connor killed Skobel, Mitch took the blame for the shootout, allowing for the law to defeat the Thieves in Law once and for all.