October 20th, 2011 | by The Bureau | Published in All Stories, Bureau Recommends
FL_003 New Scotland Yard sign - flickr/Metropolitan Police
The Bureau recommends a joint investigation by the Guardian and Newsnight which has discovered documents alleging police chiefs authorised undercover officers to lie in court in order to maintain false identities.
Police officer Jim Boyling, who infiltrated the protest group Reclaim the Streets using the name ‘Jim Sutton’, was arrested for disorderly behaviour along with several other activists in 1997. He maintained his false identity throughout the prosecution, even when giving evidence to the court under oath.
Peter Black, another police officer assigned to infiltrate political campaigns, told the Guardian that Boyling’s case was not unique. He claimed that prosecutions of undercover offices would be allowed to go ahead in order to build up their credibility within activist groups, and that prosecutions against undercover officers would only be dropped if their was a risk of a jail sentence.
The Metropolitan Police has been forced to postpone the publication of a report into the use of undercover officers by its new Chief Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, in response to the allegations.
The story follows a string of damaging revelations by the Guardian about the conduct of police spies. Earlier this year the paper revealed that the convictions of 20 environmental activists were overturned after judges ruled that evidence obtained by undercover officer Mark Kennedy had been withheld from their trial.
The Metropolitan Police has said that it is ‘reviewing issues regarding the deployment of undercover officers and the policy and practices in place at the time of the events described in the Guardian’.
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