“Lisa” spent six years with Mark Kennedy.īut a 19-year deception funded by taxpayers? Of an innocent woman? And no one at Avon and Somerset police put a stop to it? To even the most hardened spy cops campaigner this story, with its layers of misogyny, racism and cover-up, is mindblowing. I’d been with Mark Jenner for five years. We’d established early in our campaign to expose this scandal that the relationships were often long-term. I’ve suspected for a while there are likely to be more stories like these. Some of the first accounts I heard of stories similar to mine included two officers, Bob Lambert and Jim Boyling, having children with the activists they surveilled while they were undercover. I’m not easily shocked by the disgusting behaviour of undercover police, especially when it comes to their treatment of women. It’s a powerful argument but one that is too often exploited to deflect criticism, prevent scrutiny and cover up wrongdoing. The tactic is defended passionately by police and politicians because, they argue, of its function in protecting the public. Most undercover officers, such as the man who deceived Mary, are tasked elsewhere. The vast majority of covert deployments in the UK are not concerned with targeting political groups like the one I was involved in. According to the report, however, Mary discovered the cover-up in 2020. We’re told that cases from the 1970s and 80s, as evidenced in the undercover policing inquiry, happened in another era when attitudes were different, and policing didn’t have the rigorous oversight and management it does now. Often, our concerns about abusive covert policing practices are dismissed as a thing of the past. It’s clear that Mary’s is not a historical case. The story reported this week is deeply disturbing, with the victim, Mary, being deceived for nearly two decades by an undercover police officer – proving that our work is far from done. Our campaign and support organisation, Police Spies Out of Lives, aims to ensure this type of state-sponsored abuse never happens again.
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