Undercover police had children with activists

[DaveCinzano]

I doubt anyone was going to put him into an unmarked grave after a torture session much as people might feel like it.

 

[Quartz]

He asked you to think about it, not repeat your apologetics. Which of those circumstances makes a big difference, and why?

That shows you have over-thought the original questions and not understood my response. People are desperate to slag off the police, but to criticise them without sufficient information is simply wrong.

Firstly, women deliberately getting pregnant by a particular man is as old as the hills. Secondly, contraception - both male and female - does sometimes fail. Thirdly and finally is the case of deliberate conception of the child by the undercover officer. In the first case, the woman made the choice, so it's her responsibility to live with the result of that choice. In the second case, shit happens, and people have to make the best of it they can. Only the third case is wholly reprehensible: if you're creating a life, you should be committing your life and that means sharing everything with the other parent.

Which is the case here is as yet unknown. So I'm going to defer judgement.

Beyond that, I don't have a problem with the police or the security services infiltrating groups; I am, however, alarmed at the considerable per-capita sums involved, but that's a separate issue.

 

[Streathamite]

Beyond that, I don't have a problem with the police or the security services infiltrating groups; I am, however, alarmed at the considerable per-capita sums involved, but that's a separate issue.

do you honestly not feel that infiltrating avowedly peaceful groups raises a'civil liberties'-shaped question mark?

 

[Pickman's model]

That shows you have over-thought the original questions and not understood my response. People are desperate to slag off the police, but to criticise them without sufficient information is simply wrong.

Firstly, women deliberately getting pregnant by a particular man is as old as the hills. Secondly, contraception - both male and female - does sometimes fail. Thirdly and finally is the case of deliberate conception of the child by the undercover officer. In the first case, the woman made the choice, so it's her responsibility to live with the result of that choice. In the second case, shit happens, and people have to make the best of it they can. Only the third case is wholly reprehensible: if you're creating a life, you should be committing your life and that means sharing everything with the other parent.

Which is the case here is as yet unknown. So I'm going to defer judgement.

Beyond that, I don't have a problem with the police or the security services infiltrating groups; I am, however, alarmed at the considerable per-capita sums involved, but that's a separate issue.

why do you think we do not have sufficient information to criticise the police? in what ways do you feel the information in the public domain is lacking?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

WTF? Where have I mentioned the middle class in this thread??

I just think that police spies are effective and that it is hardly surprising that they are used against potentially effective movements. Don't forget that most of these undercover coppers were put in place by the state prior to any tory/ con-dem "takeover". The skills deployed were honed in Belfast. Don't be so surprised that the British state is happy to use the same tactics on the mainland to keep order.

Look at the 30 year rule releases post 1981 disturbances and you will see the extent the state is more than happy to go to. It is hardly a takeover by an alien force. It is an alien force.

Apologies for the WTF bit. Was not entirely sober and probably mixing you up with Joe Reilly (whether that counts as an apology, rather than being taken as a grotesque insult, I leave you to decide)

On the effectiveness of police spies (at doing anything besides committing perjury and dodging child-support claims) I suspect the jury is still out, but there is some sense in what you say with regard to state intentions.

I do agree with butchers though that there are some other powerful arguments.

... and I still think there's utility, depending on your audience, in the argument that goes like:

"Eco-hippies are pretty harmless and well-meaning on the whole, and secret police focussing on them is a ridiculous waste of resources to say nothing of a disgusting violation of the right to peacefully dissent in our so-called democracy.

Indeed it's arguable that it's insult to e.g. the 7/7 victims, when the police could be trying to stop actual terrorists from blowing up citizens rather than interfering with hippies.

What can possibly excuse preferring to go after a bunch peaceful eco-hippies whose worst crime against humanity is painting little kids faces and singing protest songs, but who are targets because they might cost some ACPO member's dodgy millionaire pals a bit of money, rather than actual terrorists who actually want to kill the citizens that the police are at least nominally employed to protect?"

 

[Quartz]

do you honestly not feel that infiltrating avowedly peaceful groups raises a'civil liberties'-shaped question mark?

'Avowedly peaceful'? At least one animal rights group is known for their use of violence.

why do you think we do not have sufficient information to criticise the police? in what ways do you feel the information in the public domain is lacking?

You could start by answering the questions I posed. I won't accuse someone unfairly.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

How many of these officers were infiltrating violent animal rights groups as opposed to groups practicing non-violent direct action?

We know they did infiltrate the latter, but is there any evidence they infiltrated the former?

Lambert says he was tasked with it, but the only corroboration I've seen so far just says he was infiltrating London Greenpeace.

 

[ddraig]

'Avowedly peaceful'? At least one animal rights group is known for their use of violence.
You could start by answering the questions I posed. I won't accuse someone unfairly.

is your daddy a copper?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

... and actually, the mention of violent groups leads to another key argument against using secret police spies to infiltrate eco-hippy groups.

It immediately creates the problem of not knowing whether any violence that occurs is the product of state provocateurs.

There's certainly evidence of this happening from the US, some of it very well documented, and I don't see any shining moral qualities being revealed in the stories about these undercover officers that makes one instinctively doubt the possibility here.

 

[Streathamite]

I won't accuse someone unfairly.

you mean - not like the police themselves do, time and again?

 

[Quartz]

you mean - not like the police themselves do, time and again?

That they do it is not an excuse for us doing it.

 

[dylanredefined]

do you honestly not feel that infiltrating avowedly peaceful groups raises a'civil liberties'-shaped question mark?

Once you have infiltrated them found out there is no secret plan for violence you stop the operation.Police need the ability to do stuff like this ,but,It really should be threat and intelligence led.Not launched because someone heard something in a pub.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Once you have infiltrated them found out there is no secret plan for violence you stop the operation.Police need the ability to do stuff like this ,but,It really should be threat and intelligence led.Not launched because someone heard something in a pub.

Well clearly these groups are infiltrated because of their political views and not the criminality or otherwise of their activities. I doubt there was ever anything heard in a pub tbh.

 

[Streathamite]

Once you have infiltrated them found out there is no secret plan for violence you stop the operation.Police need the ability to do stuff like this ,but,It really should be threat and intelligence led.Not launched because someone heard something in a pub.

but that was the problem; they didn't. They kept it going for years with Kennedy, Lambert, jacobs, boyling and the rest. Purely because the groups were left-wing activists. And it led to the fiasco of the ratcliff power station trial.
By any standards, this has been a scandalous abuse of their powers, and an equally scandalous waste of taxpayers' money.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I think part of the problem is that there's a persistent agenda to conflate undercover action taken against things that everybody would understand as serious crimes requiring serious measures (murder, maiming, torture, gang violence, corruption etc), with undercover action against political dissent (typically property damage and/or reputational damage to an unethical business or government organisation)

So by its nature it's not threat or intellgence led in terms of a proportionate response to actual recognisable crime. It can only be understood as proportional in terms of an ideological threat to the status quo. The threat is the popularity of an environmental movement critical of capitalism and the crimes are, for the most part, so minor compared to the secret police response to them, that they might as well be littering

 

[dylanredefined]

I can't understand why they did it couldn't have taken more than 2 months to see they were at most annoying unless they had a budget and everyone conspired to keep it going infiltrating this group was a nice little earner and low risk.Or they were morons and really thought just dig a little deeper and they would find the violent ones.

 

[Pickman's model]

You could start by answering the questions I posed. I won't accuse someone unfairly.

i think we have all the information we need to express an opinion in this matter. you obviously differ. what more do you think needs to be in the public domain before you would feel justified in saying that the police have acted disgracefully? and - lest we forget - accusing someone of acting disgracefully is not the same as saying they've committed a crime.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

That shows you have over-thought the original questions and not understood my response. People are desperate to slag off the police, but to criticise them without sufficient information is simply wrong.

Firstly, women deliberately getting pregnant by a particular man is as old as the hills. Secondly, contraception - both male and female - does sometimes fail. Thirdly and finally is the case of deliberate conception of the child by the undercover officer. In the first case, the woman made the choice, so it's her responsibility to live with the result of that choice. In the second case, shit happens, and people have to make the best of it they can. Only the third case is wholly reprehensible: if you're creating a life, you should be committing your life and that means sharing everything with the other parent.

Which is the case here is as yet unknown. So I'm going to defer judgement.

Beyond that, I don't have a problem with the police or the security services infiltrating groups; I am, however, alarmed at the considerable per-capita sums involved, but that's a separate issue.

The "woman getting preggers on the.sly" argument borders on the mysoginistic. The contraception fail scenario also neglects to consider why an undercover cop wouldnt, upon hearing the news of his due baby, sit down with the lady and tell her a shocking truth. In all three cases, informed consent and regard dor the reproductive rights of the women have been completely ignored.

None of this should need spelling out.

Im not a knee jerk police hater. I have said before that a "fuck all pigs" attitude detracts credibility from the times when there are legit xriticisms to be made. This is one of those times.

 

[DotCommunist]

When recounting old war stories at the retired coppers home they are going to look pretty feeble next to the blokes who infiltrated loyalist terrorists and AQ cells

 

[Streathamite]

I can't understand why they did it couldn't have taken more than 2 months to see they were at most annoying unless they had a budget and everyone conspired to keep it going infiltrating this group was a nice little earner and low risk.Or they were morons and really thought just dig a little deeper and they would find the violent ones.

because the police are fundamentally willing agents of state repression, for one - their mindset is that all lefties are The Enemy

 

[two sheds]

There's also a fine line between agreeing with activists on a particularl strategy or to go on a particular action as part of their cover, and suggesting people commit criminal acts that would otherwise not have happened.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

There's also a fine line between agreeing with activists on a particularl strategy or to go on a particular action as part of their cover, and suggesting people commit criminal acts that would otherwise not have happened.

Which we know has happened persistently in cases elsewhere, particularly cases involving violence or other serious crimes which might tend to justify more extreme measures than you can reasonably hang on people for painting little kids faces.

See for example various cases reported on by US journo Will Potter.

http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/green-scare/

See also:

An example of this involved Connecticut animal rights activist Fran Trutt, charged with attempting to plant a bomb she says was meant to scare an offical of the U.S. Surgical Corporation which uses animals for medical tests and sales demonstrations. Her accomplices, not charged with any crime, turned out to be private security agents hired by U.S. Surgical. Trutt's attorney, John Williams, says there is "absolutely no question that Trutt was enticed" into considering the bombing by agents from Perceptions International."

Furthermore, several months prior to the attempted bombing, according to Williams "the entire situation was reviewed at a meeting that included representatives of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Connecticut States Attorney's office, the security director of U.S. Surgical and at least one representative of Perceptions International...and the topic of the meeting was Fran Trutt."

According to Williams, it was the agents of Perceptions International, working for U.S. Surgical but posing as Trutt's friends, who suggested the bombing, paid for the purchase of the pipe bomb, and drove her to the U.S. Surgical parking lot. When Trutt had second thoughts while on her way to the parking lot, she called a trusted friend, and was encouraged to proceed--that "friend", too, was a private undercover agent from Perceptions International.

http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/greenspy.html

 

[Quartz]

The "woman getting preggers on the.sly" argument borders on the mysoginistic.

As compared with the decidedly misandrist comments about the police officers?

The police officers have been criticised for fathering children. It is entirely reasonable to ask if, in each case, the decision to conceive was taken by the mother. Sexual equality works both ways.

 

[Random]

The use of the term "misandry" is usually a fairly accurate sign that the person using it is a complete cunt.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

As compared with the decidedly misandrist comments about the police officers?

The police officers have been criticised for fathering children. It is entirely reasonable to ask if, in each case, the decision to conceive was taken by the mother. Sexual equality works both ways.

It's entirely reasonable to answer "no, the decision to conceive the child of a policeman was not taken by the mother".

It's an utterly ridiculous line to follow, this "women are always getting pregnant without the consent of their partner..." thing. As well as being utterly irrelevant, it is also not knowable. There is nothing to suggest that this might have happened, and it has no relation to the important issues about this case.

You are talking some serious bollocks about this whole thing. I'd assume you were pissed, but its been ongoing for a while. Take a look at yourself.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I asked a feminist scholar of my close personal acquaintance. I quote her comments without editing below.

"'Misandry' - almost inevitably, any time someone uses that word, it's an embittered misogynist, probably engaged in a hideous custody dispute.

Often the reason they can't see their kids is that they beat them and their ex-wives have often themselves been abused by these fucks.

<long pause for thought>

Or just some 'Nice Guy' (TM) who can't get laid and has been reading propaganda of put out by arseholes from the first category ... "

 

[ymu]

As compared with the decidedly misandrist comments about the police officers?

The police officers have been criticised for fathering children. It is entirely reasonable to ask if, in each case, the decision to conceive was taken by the mother. Sexual equality works both ways.

The only misandry in the undercover coppers story is the near absence of comment or protest about the feelings of the men that were seduced by (at least one) female officer. This is not the thread for it, but there is a nasty subtext to the way they've been written out.

 

[Quartz]

It's entirely reasonable to answer "no, the decision to conceive the child of a policeman was not taken by the mother".

Reasonable? Not really. We do not know. It is eminently reasonable to ask. Are you saying that the fathers forced the women?

It's an utterly ridiculous line to follow, this "women are always getting pregnant without the consent of their partner..." thing.

I said no such thing.

And Bernie, perhaps your educated friend might consider that the writer might himself have some education? As it happens, I studied both Latin and Greek at school, so such words are rather more natural to me. Does she have a similar problem with the use of the word 'misogyny'? Sauce for the goose and all that?

 

[Pickman's model]

As it happens, I studied both Latin and Greek at school, so such words are rather more natural to me. Does she have a similar problem with the use of the word 'misogyny'? Sauce for the goose and all that?

when you say 'such words are rather more natural to me' you come across as an almighty fucking snob. is this intentional?

 

[Pickman's model]

*taps watch*