Dr. Bradley Garrett Got Busted Exploring London’s Forbidden Underworld

Work that I've done in the past, particularly with the urban explorers, got me into a lot of trouble. I mean, I got arrested. My all of the people that I worked with ended up getting arrested because the police got my fucking notes. And I mean, it was a it was a terrible. How the police get your notes. It was a terrible situation. Well, I so we I was I was going out with these urban explorers into all of this subterranean infrastructure underneath London. And after we went into those sewer systems, then we got into electricity tunnels, then we started getting into bunkers. So how illegal is this? These are like layers under the city. So imagine there's like, you know, five layers under the city. Right. So we go from the sewers to the electricity tunnels, to the infrastructural systems, to the bunkers. And then we started getting into what are called deep level systems. Right. And they're they're very similar to the bunkers that the U.S. government is building here that they called they called DUMs, Deep Underground Military Bases. Right. We started getting into like serious critical infrastructure. Like at some point, how easy was it to get into those? It took us years. It took us years. There's quite a lot of research. But I mean, at some point we got into what are called the BT deep level tunnels, British telecommunications, deep level tunnels. And we were like inside the telecommunications trunk for all of the United Kingdom, you know. And at this point, we're like, you know, 100 feet underground, 120 feet underground. We were actually we were walking through this tunnel about, you know, about 100 feet underground. And one of the explorers I was with is like, there's a there's a manhole above us. I was like, what do you mean there's a manhole above us? You know, we're like we're in the deepest level right now. And we pop this manhole and a camera swivels, you know, and stares at us like, oh, God. And then we realized we were into some some critical shit. So what was it? It was just it was just telecommunication hubs. Right. It's just like the trunk of all of the the the infrastructure for fiber optics and phone lines. And they just have an exposed manhole cover and a tunnel that you can get to. Dude, we wiggled through like we wiggled from tunnel to tunnel like through tiny crevices. We were getting into like the deep underbelly of the city. I mean, it was not it was not easy to get to. But but here's the thing. At the same time, we had been cracking all of the the abandoned tube stations, metro stations in London. Right. So we took a we took a map of the tube from 1932 and we set a map from 2008 on top of it. And what you see are a bunch of stations that are no longer on the map. Right. That's your first clue. So there were like 40 some. Then we then we started doing research and we figured out that there there's got to be at least 14 stations that still have like ticket offices or platforms like there's something there that you could find. So we started sneaking into the tube to go and find these places. Like we would wait till the train stopped at two in the morning and they would like climb up a bridge and get onto the tracks and we'd run through the tunnels and we and we were finding these stations one after another, incredible time capsules. You know, there were artifacts left behind posters. Like we'd find tickets on the ground from 40, 40 years old. You know, I mean, really cool stuff. Some of a lot of these stations were bombed out during World War Two. But finding these is like, again, this kind of like, like here's the archaeologists in me, right? Like we were having this visceral connection to history. We were finding this stuff that was giving us like a real sense of being inside history in material terms. So we're we're posting every time we crack one of these stations, we post it on our blogs like, oh, you know, we've cracked Mark Lane. We've cracked Down Street. We've cracked whatever. And we're all excited about it. And we end like the windows narrowing. And we get we get towards the end of the 14 stations and we're starting to think, you know. Like the cops are surely watching what we're doing, right? The British transport police and kind of know where we're going to go next, because there's only a few stations left. So we stop posting stuff. And on Christmas of 2012, we cracked the last station underneath the British Museum, which like there's all sorts of cool stories about like there was a there was a ghost in here, it's a haunted station and whatever. But we did it. We never got caught. So for me, this is the end of the research project. Is there a fear of being like retroactively prosecuted for this stuff? We'll get we'll get there. Oh, so I'm done with my research project. I've written my PhD. I published my first book, Explore Everything about all of our or I hadn't published the book yet, actually. And I fly to Cambodia to work on a totally different research project. Right. Like I'm switching gears. I'm going to go do something else. And I fly back from Cambodia via Singapore and the plane lands at Heathrow. And, you know, the thing goes off. Ding. And you stand up and you get your bags and then nothing's happening. And they say, can everyone please sit down again? I sit down, I look out the plane and there's cop cars everywhere. And I'm like, oh, shit. You know, I came from Singapore. Someone brought drugs. I don't know. There's a terrorist in the play like who? I have no idea what's going on. And the cops get on the plane and they're like 42K, 42K. Dr. Garrett. Yeah, you're coming with us. OK, so they cuff me. They they have me like retrieve my bag from the baggage claim and they take me through through passport control in handcuffs. And obviously the UK government's like, yeah, we'll go ahead and keep that passport. Thank you. So they eventually charged me with conspiracy to commit criminal damage. Now, what's weird about England is that trespass isn't a criminal offense. So you can't you can't charge people with trespass unless you're in very specific circumstances. So they tried out this charge of conspiracy to commit criminal damage because it's it's about intention. It's a thought crime. Like if I text you and I'm like, hey, dude, you know, the bar is closed right now because of Covid, you want to break in and just like pour ourselves a beer and you're like, yeah, let's do it. Like we've committed conspiracy to commit criminal damage. We've committed to the crime. So anyway, we for years were dragged through the British legal system. And I got trapped in the UK for three years. Well, I was they kept my passport, dude. I was trapped there. And here's where it gets really weird is that when the plane landed at Singapore, there was a journalist from GQ who was supposed to meet us because we were going to take him into some of this subterranean infrastructure and show him all these spaces. And he's like, you know, by the time I got out of jail, like 48 hours later, I had I had all these messages from like, you asshole, I came. I showed up at the airport and you weren't there and whatever, you know. And I finally find this guy, Matthew Power. And and he's like, are you serious? Like you got because we had timed it to land at the same time. Yeah. And he's like, you serious? You got arrested at that moment. And he said, what about your house? I said, I have no idea. So we go to my house and we unlock the door with these keys that the police had given me because they took down my door with a battering ram. Right. And then, you know, like put some padlocks on there that they drilled into the door in the door frame. And I open it up and my apartment has just been ravaged. Right. Like stuff ever the mattresses flipped over, all the cupboards are torn apart. There's like pieces of the door all over the floor. And underneath all of it, there was a job contract from the University of Oxford to do a postdoc after I because I just finished my PhD. And the journalist from GQ is like, dude, I can go home right now. I've got this story. I don't need to explore anything. I'm done. And how did it resolve? Well, the by the time we got to court, I mean, the prosecution was just in shambles. I mean, it was a total debacle because there was no evidence that we had broken anything, you know, because of their laws. You had just trespassed, which isn't a law. We just trespassed. Yeah. But they spent, you know, three hundred thousand pounds, I don't know, four hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer money to run this prosecution. So they were going to see it to the end. And essentially, you know, they got they they confiscated my computers, my hard drives, my notebooks. And that was that was the central component of the evidence that was used to prosecute everyone. So essentially, like I just made a deal with them. I was like, look, I'll I'll take a hit, you know, if you like, if everyone else can just get off, you know, I'll take the hit for it. So I pled guilty to I think it was four counts of criminal damage, which included damage to a screw from a board that I had taken off and put back on to a vent shaft. Oh, I know. Sliding, sliding open a window. Oh, that was aiding and abetting side open a window for someone to crawl through. And it was just like a list of ridiculous things, but they didn't care because they just they needed their they needed to win. They needed to win, you know, so I gave them that. But now I've got I've got this criminal record in England. So when you land, you get pulled aside. If you go to I used to, I actually filed a complaint with the government and, you know, they would like severely harass me. And then when I moved to Australia, I had the same problem. Like they had put flags on my passport. And you filed a complaint and did it go through? And I filed the complaint and they fixed it. They took the flags off the passport. Yeah. Oh, essentially saying like, you know, I did my thing, you know. Yeah. Like, why do I have to keep paying for this over and over again? So it was really funny when I tried when they when they originally gave me my passport back, so like I go to court and then, you know, the judge is like, Dr. Garrett, you're very naughty or whatever. Here's take your passport back. Do they have wigs on? Yes. Yeah. The wigs are fantastic. Really? Yeah. They still do that. Yeah, they still do that. They're really good. That's real. Yeah. Yeah. The barristers all have their wigs and they can't. They carry them around like a like a cat, you know. And then they have to put it on when they're doing that fucking bonkers. But so I get so they give me my passport back and I and the next day I was supposed to fly to Sydney to go speak at the festival of dangerous ideas. I was the obvious speaker, right? And I go to the airport and the guy swipes it and he's like, oh, yeah, you don't want to use this. I was like, what does it say? What does the screen say? And he's like, I can't I can't relay that. But you should probably go. It gives me a passport back and then I should probably leave the country. No, like you should not get on a plane with this. Like you're going to have a problem on the other side. You know, whatever he's like, how else can you travel? Well, exactly. So then so then I missed my flight and I had to go back. I had to go to the U.S. embassy and I'm like, you know, I've just tried to fly with my passport and it doesn't work. And the guy at the embassy swipes it and he says, oh, wow. And then he gets out a hole puncher and he goes, dunk, dunk, dunk right through my passport. And he says, you shouldn't use that. And then like three hours later, they gave me another passport and I flew out the next day and the passport's good. The new one's good. It's fine. Wow. But then I but then I started getting stopped again. So they like, I don't know, tack the flags on there later. I mean, it was a real ordeal. But you know, the thing. I mean, it was it was it was traumatic for me, of course. It was like stuck in a foreign country and, you know, like you get worried about your income. I was worried about being they did try to deport me at some point because once you have a criminal offense, they can't report. So anyway, I beat that down. Did they find you like what was the ultimate judgment? Yeah, I was I think it was two thousand pounds, about three thousand dollars. I got fined. Not too bad. It's not a big deal. Sure. You made some money off the book. If not, you're going to make some now. You know what, dude, I I made I made all the money that I made on my first book, Explore Everything, went to my lawyers. Who I have to say were phenomenal. Like they did a great job. But it was like every time I get a royalty check, I just sign it over to them. You know, and it did seem like karma. It was like, well, I broke in all this shit and then I wrote a book and then the money went to the lawyers and lawyers got me off. And it all kind of worked out.