Police Spying Inquiry to Examine Targeting of UK Black Justice Groups

A public inquiry into undercover policing is poised to reveal details of how police repeatedly spied on black justice groups, including several run by grieving families whose relatives were killed by police or died in custody. The judge-led inquiry was launched six years ago by the home secretary at the time, Theresa May, after the Guardian revealed police covertly monitored the campaign for justice over the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. The inquiry is due to scrutinise how the police spied on at least 17 other, mainly black, grieving families between 1970 and 2005. Many are high–profile cases that have been the source of tension between the Metropolitan police and minority communities for many years.

Among those spied on were the campaigns for justice over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot repeatedly in the head in 2005 by police after being mistaken for a suicide bomber, and Cherry Groce, whose shooting by police two decades earlier, in 1985, sparked the Brixton riots. The latest disclosures will come after months of allegations about policing and race in modern-day Britain following the mass Black Lives Matter protests during which more than 250,000 people took to the streets. The BLM protests and allegations of continuing police racism have led police chiefs to pledge a new race action plan, with polls showing widespread mistrust of policing within Britain’s black communities.

The inquiry, which is due to start hearing evidence on Monday, will scrutinise the deployment of nearly 140 undercover officers who spied on more than 1,000 political groups across more than four decades. It will examine how police spies deceived women into long-term relationships and stole the identities of dead children in order to monitor and in some cases disrupt political campaigns, mostly on the left.

Read more: Rob Evans, Vikram Dodd, Paul Lewis, Guardian, https://is.gd/p87xFB