sábado, 15 de enero de 2011

Police Defended After 'Officers Hid Tapes' - Sky News

6:50pm UK, Saturday January 15, 2011

Steph Oliver, Sky News online

Senior officers have defended the use of undercover operations following claims police withheld secret recordings that would have cleared accused protesters.

L Police House General

ACPO says the police cannot operate without intelligence

The comments by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) come after the trial of six environmental campaigners collapsed on Monday.

Defence lawyers had said the case was abandoned because an undercover police officer had a crisis of conscience and offered to give evidence on their behalf.

But The Times newspaper now claims the case was scrapped because Nottinghamshire Police may have hidden evidence.

An independent probe has been launched amid the claims, which suggest the Crown Prosecution Service was informed the force had hidden tapes that "fatally undermined" the case against the protesters.

Police officers are subject to the law and where they break the law in the course of their activities it will and must be investigated.

ACPO spokeswoman

The activists were accused of trying to shut down one of Britain's biggest power stations - Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire in 2009.

The recordings were gathered by undercover officer Pc Mark Kennedy, who used the guise of a rock climber while monitoring the actions of the environmentalists across Europe.

PC Kennedy, a former member of the Metropolitan Police, is thought to have spent the last seven years as part of the environmental protest movement, and was known to activists as Mark Stone.

Mr Kennedy, who is now jobless and in hiding, has called in PR guru Max Clifford to tell his story.

Independent officials have now launched an investigation into whether police tried to cover up Mr Kennedy's role.

Nottinghamshire Police has also confirmed they would hold an internal review into the secret operation.

Mark Kennedy

PC Mark Kennedy

A force spokesman said: "The force has requested the investigation reviews all the elements of policing relating to this case, to establish whether they were carried out in an ethical and proportionate manner, within the expected code of practice."

The developments have sparked a wider debate on police tactics used to monitor political and environmental groups.

A spokeswoman for ACPO said: "The police service cannot operate effectively to prevent and detect crime unless it uses intelligence.

"The Police Service has an absolute commitment that the gathering and use of intelligence must be necessary, proportionate and lawful.

"Police officers are subject to the law and where they break the law in the course of their activities it will and must be investigated."

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