One more insult heaped upon Lawrence family
UNDERCOVER police operations fall into that dubious category of activities that begs the question: do the ends justify the means? The revelations by Peter Francis, a former undercover police officer, that he was asked to find “dirt” on the family of Stephen Lawrence following the racist murder of the teenager in 1993, shows the danger of the police using their powers for their own ends. For 20 years, Doreen Lawrence, Stephen’s mother, has been a dignified campaigner for truth and justice, winning widespread respect and admiration. The new revelations were a cruel blow just when the family could start to feel with the conviction last year of two men for the attack that a degree of justice had finally been achieved.
The discovery that the police had actively sought to discredit the Lawrences and Stephen’s friend Duwayne Brooks, who witnessed the murder, must disturb us all. We have long known, as a result of the inquiry by Sir William Macpherson into the Metropolitan Police’s handling of the murder, that it was “marred by professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers”. It is now clear that the rot went even deeper. Mr Francis has said that he wanted to reveal the undercover operation on the Lawrences to the Macpherson inquiry but was overruled by superiors on the grounds there would be “battling on the streets” if the public found out about it.
Yesterday, Lord Condon, the Metropolitan police commissioner at the time, said there was no authority, as far as he was aware, to carry out an undercover smear campaign against the Lawrences and he told officers to co-operate fully with the inquiry. At some point in the hierarchy between Mr Francis and the commissioner, a different view was taken. If there is to be public confidence in the police in general (not just in the Met), it is essential to get to the bottom of what looks like a suspiciously autonomous operation within the Metropolitan Police.
Home Secretary Theresa May has acknowledged the need for stronger oversight and control of undercover operations with tighter authorisation requirements and, vitally, constant reassessment and procedures to ensure ethical guidelines are respected. This is a recognition of how seriously procedures have gone awry but more is required if the public is to regain trust in the police.
There is already an investigation by the chief constable of Derbyshire into separate, equally disturbing, undercover operations in the 1980s and 90s and a QC-led inquiry into alleged police corruption in the original Lawrence investigation. Mrs May has extended these to cover the new allegations of a police operation to discredit Stephen Lawrence’s family and friends. The question now is whether these claims should be the subject of a separate inquiry. That would be the ideal but if it is not to happen, the present investigations must be given the resources to be thorough and complete. Even if we accept that undercover operations are sometimes necessary, such as the infiltration of groups of potential terrorists to prevent lethal attacks, these disturbing revelations demonstrate yet again that we must keep demanding substantive answers to the age-old query: who guards the guards?