bristling badger: mark kennedy: the hmic report

mark kennedy: the hmic report

The latest report on undercover police infiltration of activists came out last week. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary looked into the work of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) who ran the network of spy cops until 2008, and especially at the work of their officer Mark Kennedy.

Radio 4's Today programme said that HMIC are independent and 'this was not the police investigating themselves'. The report was written last year by Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Chief Constable of Merseyside, now Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. When it finally came out it was presented as the work former Surrey Police Chief Constable, Sir Dennis O'Connor.

This was the second attempt at releasing Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary's findings. They were all set to publish last October, and were widely believed to say Kennedy was a rogue officer off mission, and no outside oversight is needed for undercover cops.

But with just hours to go before publication the whole thing got pulled after the Guardian published a report of another undercover cop, Jim Boyling, who went through a court case under his activist alias. This proved that it's not about one cop and, as Boyling's bosses must have known about his prosecution, the beyond-the-lawness of the undercover unit is something systemic. 

The new version of the HMIC report makes passing reference to this, merely dismissing it as outside the report's remit. This raises an important question; if the Boyling revelations are not the subject matter of the report, why did it need to be withdrawn and given a four-month rewrite?

The most obvious answer is that the report was going to hang Kennedy out to dry but say everything else in the garden was rosy. If that's so, the original report was either a pile of lies or else the product of pathetically superficial research into its subject. I'll leave you to decide for yourself which is the more likely. .......

>>>>>>>>>>>  cont.