Met Chief Says Officers’ Use Of Fake Identities In Court Was NOT Illegal

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AND NOW: Police Chiefs ‘Authorised Undercover Police Officers To Give False Evidence In Court’


Met chief says officers’ use of fake identities in court was not illegal (Telegraph, Oct. 27, 2011):

Britain’s most senior police officer has defended the practice of undercover officers using fake identities in court, claiming there is no specific law forbidding it.

Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, made the comments as he announced that Scotland Yard has begun two new inquiries.

It brings the number of inquiries into infiltration of political groups to 11, prompting a call from Lord Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, for one overarching public inquiry. Macdonald said Hogan-Howe’s defence was “stunning and worrying”.

Hogan-Howe appeared before the Metropolitan Police Authority on Thursday facing increasing pressure over allegations that two police spies used their false identities as political activists when they were prosecuted in court.

He told the authority: “There’s no law that says it can’t happen. The fact that someone has concealed their identity doesn’t mean the crime didn’t happen. In absolute terms, the criminal law does not make a crime of it. If you are dealing with more serious crimes, we have to seek all options.”

Read moreMet Chief Says Officers’ Use Of Fake Identities In Court Was NOT Illegal

Eco-Spy Under Cover Cop Mark Kennedy Masterminded G8 Protest


Mark Kennedy infiltrated a series of groups.

The undercover police agent exposed at the heart of the environmental protest movement was one of the masterminds of the G8 protests in Gleneagles in 2005.

The Sunday Herald has learned police officer Mark Kennedy was one of the prime organisers, moving people and equipment to and from the protest base camp in Stirling, earning him the title “Transport Mark”. His organisational blueprint was then used for the three other “climate camps” – massed protests against power stations and airports in Drax, Kings North and Heathrow.

It has also emerged that one of Kennedy’s last acts while undercover was teaching activists how to spot police spies in their midst.

Read moreEco-Spy Under Cover Cop Mark Kennedy Masterminded G8 Protest

Met Police Chief: Protect Police From Lawsuits (Put Police Above The Law)

Rights groups attack Sir Paul Stephenson’s plan to curb court action against officers


Met chief Sir Paul Stephenson Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

Sir Paul Stephenson, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, has privately lobbied the home secretary to make it harder for people to take legal action against his force, the Guardian has learned.

Critics say the plans amount to an attempt by the police to put themselves beyond the rule of law and undermine constitutional safeguards against abuses of power. The Met’s chief says money is being wasted on speculative claims, with lawyers gaining large fees that would be better spent fighting crime.

The proposals are contained in appendices to a letter marked “confidential” and sent to Theresa May by Stephenson, who is Britain’s most senior police officer, on 22 June. In the documents, released after inquiries by the Guardian, he suggests:

• Making it harder for people to sue the police for damages in civil actions. These usually involve allegations of brutality or wrongful arrest.

• Loading higher costs on to officers and other staff suing police forces at employment tribunals. These cases include claims of discrimination and unfair treatment.

• Charging the public a fee for freedom of information requests. The Freedom of Information Act is supposed to help citizens hold public bodies to account.

Last night, Stephenson’s proposals were opposed by an alliance of human rights lawyers and civil liberties groups. The main body representing rank and file police officers attacked the employment tribunal plans. The government is considering various ideas to shake up policing, and the proposals are being considered by ministers and their officials.

Read moreMet Police Chief: Protect Police From Lawsuits (Put Police Above The Law)

Metropolitan Police Whistleblower Forced Out By Officer He Exposed

Criminals!


Tribunal rules that police colluded at top level to destroy the career of junior detective who reported one of them for cheating

metropolitan-police-whistleblower-forced-out-by-officer-he-exposed
DS Howard Shaw was exonerated by an internal police hearing

A senior police officer cheated to get a promotion and then used his new position to wreck the career of a detective who blew the whistle on him, an employment tribunal has found.

Detective Inspector Kevin Williams – who accessed questions on an internal database shortly before he was interviewed for a promotion in the Metropolitan Police e-crime unit – still retains high-level security clearance and now works in the counter-terror unit. In the meantime, Detective Sergeant Howard Shaw, who blew the whistle, has been forced out of his job.

The tribunal found that senior Scotland Yard officers colluded in bringing a false disciplinary case, and Commander Nigel Mawer – who led the investigation into the loss of government disks containing the information of 25 million people in 2007 – was criticised for being “surprisingly and exceptionally careless” in his handling of the case. The judge concluded that Mr Mawer “did not consider and did not care whether or not the disciplinary proceedings against the claimant were properly founded”.

When Shaw, 47, discovered that Williams had asked a colleague for the questions on an interview panel, he reported the incident to Detective Superintendent Charlie McMurdie. But no action was taken and Williams was appointed to the e-crime unit soon afterwards. When it emerged that he had accessed the questions online, Shaw again complained to McMurdie. Days later McMurdie and Williams instigated disciplinary proceedings against Shaw, making a false allegation that he had broken an order not to continue with an outside business interest, and removed him from the e-crime unit, the tribunal found.

“There is an assumption in the police that if you are disciplined then you are guilty,” said DS Shaw. “I was ostracised by my peers, it was a lonely two years. I was under the care of my doctor and on medication, I had counselling. It had an effect on my whole family.”

Read moreMetropolitan Police Whistleblower Forced Out By Officer He Exposed

UK: Only A Totalitarian State Wants To Disarms Law-Abiding Citizens

sir-ian-blair
Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner
Sir Ian Blair

You could not look for a better encapsulation of the mentality of the state-worshipping ruling elite than the claim by Sir Ian Blair, former disastrous Metropolitan Police Commissioner and newly-appointed peer (nothing succeeds like failure), writing in The Guardian on the topic of gun control: “The possession of a firearm is a privilege, not, except in a few cases, a necessity.”

Have you got that? The possession of a firearm is a “privilege”. In fact it is nothing of the sort: it is a right, guaranteed to all British subjects by the Bill of Rights of 1689.
This assertion by Blair, whose police officers notoriously abused their firearms privileges by shooting dead Jean-Charles de Menezes, affords an instructive insight into the leftist/liberal belief that the state is the all-powerful authority controlling human existence. It may deign to extend privileges, such as firearm ownership, to a minority of its helots, but it does so as an act of grace, not in deference to any rights they might claim.

The state, in reality, is supposed to be the servant of the public. Its role should be rigidly limited and every power it exercises jealously scrutinised for overreach. For centuries, the entire basis of English Common Law was the assumption that everything that was not forbidden was legal. Today, the British subject is presumed to have virtually no rights (unless he belongs to a politically correct minority) and only by the most laboured exertion on his part may he make his case to the state, his master, that a privilege such as gun ownership should graciously be extended to him.

Read moreUK: Only A Totalitarian State Wants To Disarms Law-Abiding Citizens

Met Office blocked role of leading scientist in ‘hockey stick’ climate change row

Global warming is a scam!

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IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri was told of false Himalayan glacier melting claims before Copenhagen


professor-john-mitchell
Ignored concerns: Professor Mitchell approved controversial report

The Meteorological Office is blocking public scrutiny of the central role played by its top climate scientist in a highly controversial report by the beleaguered United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate Science, shared responsibility for the most worrying headline in the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning IPCC report – that the Earth is now hotter than at any time in the past 1,300 years.

And he approved the inclusion in the report of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a steep 20th Century rise.

By the time the 2007 report was being written, the graph had been heavily criticised by climate sceptics who had shown it minimised the ‘medieval warm period’ around 1000AD, when the Vikings established farming settlements in Greenland.

In fact, according to some scientists, the planet was then as warm, or even warmer, than it is today.

Early drafts of the report were fiercely contested by official IPCC reviewers, who cited other scientific papers stating that the 1,300-year claim and the graph were inaccurate.

But the final version, approved by Prof Mitchell, the relevant chapter’s review editor, swept aside these concerns.

Now, the Met Office is refusing to disclose Prof Mitchell’s working papers and correspondence with his IPCC colleagues in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The block has been endorsed in writing by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth – whose department has responsibility for the Met Office.

Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that the Met Office’s stonewalling was part of a co-ordinated, legally questionable strategy by climate change academics linked with the IPCC to block access to outsiders.

Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled that scientists from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia – the source of the leaked ‘Warmergate’ emails – acted unlawfully in refusing FOI requests to share their data.

warmergate

Some of the FOI requests made to them came from the same person who has made requests to the Met Office.

He is David Holland, an electrical engineer familiar with advanced statistics who has written several papers questioning orthodox thinking on global warming.

The Met Office’s first response to Mr Holland was a claim that Prof Mitchell’s records had been ‘deleted’ from its computers.

Later, officials admitted they did exist after all, but could not be disclosed because they were ‘personal’, and had nothing to do with the professor’s Met Office job.

Finally, they conceded that this too was misleading because Prof Mitchell had been paid by the Met Office for his IPCC work and had received Government expenses to travel to IPCC meetings.

Read moreMet Office blocked role of leading scientist in ‘hockey stick’ climate change row

Scotland Yard officers are suspected of defrauding taxpayers of millions

More than 300 elite Scotland Yard detectives are suspected of defrauding the taxpayer of millions of pounds by abusing their corporate credit cards, the Observer can disclose.

Auditors who have examined the American Express accounts of 3,500 officers involved in countering terrorism and organised crime have reported almost one in 11 detectives to the Metropolitan Police’s internal investigators.

A senior officer appears to have spent £40,000 on his Amex card in one year, without authorisation. Items bought by others without permission include suits, women’s clothing and fishing rods.

The scale of the suspected fraud, disclosed in an internal Metropolitan Police Authority report, will send shock waves through the force. Until now, the investigation into expenses fraud was thought to have focused on fewer than 40 officers. It comes days after Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner, faced the potentially damaging disclosure that six officers face investigation over claims that a drug suspect’s head was forced into a lavatory that was flushed repeatedly.

Authority members expressed their dismay last night. Jenny Jones, a Green Party member, said: “Taxpayers have every right to be angry about this. Well done to the current auditing team for uncovering this, but what on earth was happening before? Why was there no accountability?

“It beggars belief that our police, who are supposed to be solving crime, are suspected of fraud on a grand scale.”

Read moreScotland Yard officers are suspected of defrauding taxpayers of millions

London’s Metropolitan Police accused of waterboarding drug suspects

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The claims are part of an investigation which includes accusations that evidence was fabricated and suspects’ property was stolen

Metropolitan Police officers subjected suspects to waterboarding, according to allegations at the centre of a major anti-corruption inquiry, The Times has learnt.

The torture claims are part of a wide-ranging investigation which also includes accusations that officers fabricated evidence and stole suspects’ property. It has already led to the abandonment of a drug trial and the suspension of several police officers.

However, senior policing officials are most alarmed by the claim that officers in Enfield, North London, used the controversial CIA interrogation technique to simulate drowning. Scotland Yard is appointing a new borough commander in Enfield in a move that is being seen as an attempt by Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner, to enforce a regime of “intrusive supervision”.

The waterboarding claims will fuel the debate about police conduct that has raged in the wake of hundreds of public complaints of brutality at the anti-G20 protests in April.

The part of the inquiry focusing on alleged police brutality has been taken over by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It is examining the conduct of six officers connected to drug raids in November in which four men and a woman were arrested at addresses in Enfield and Tottenham. Police said they found a large amount of cannabis and the suspects were charged with importation of a Class C drug. The case was abandoned four months later when the Crown Prosecution Service said it would not have been in the public interest to proceed. It is understood that the trial, by revealing the torture claims, would have compromised the criminal investigation into the six officers.

Read moreLondon’s Metropolitan Police accused of waterboarding drug suspects

G20: Police used undercover agents to incite crowds

MP demands inquiry into Met tactics at demo


Police and protesters clash in London on 1 April 2009. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA

An MP who was involved in last month’s G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.

Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.

Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.

Brake, a member of the influential home affairs select committee, will raise the allegations when he gives evidence before parliament’s joint committee on human rights on Tuesday.

“When I was in the middle of the crowd, two people came over to me and said, ‘There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,'” Brake said. But when the crowd became suspicious of the men and accused them of being police officers, the pair approached the police line and passed through after showing some form of identification.

Read moreG20: Police used undercover agents to incite crowds

Terrorism adviser to Met police is on wanted list

Interpol notice urges arrest of Islam TV chief


Mohamed Ali Harrath

A man wanted by Interpol for his links to an alleged terrorist organisation has been advising Scotland Yard on countering Muslim extremism, a Times investigation has discovered.

Mohamed Ali Harrath has been the subject of the Interpol red notice since 1992 because of his alleged activities in Tunisia, where he co-founded the Tunisian Islamic Front (FIT).

Tunisia has accused Mr Harrath, the chief executive officer of the Islam Channel in Britain and an adviser to the Scotland Yard Muslim Contact Unit, of seeking help from Osama bin Laden. It says that the FIT wants to establish “an Islamic state by means of armed revolutionary violence”.

Mr Harrath has been convicted in absentia of numerous criminal and terrorism-related offences by Tunisian courts and sentenced to 56 years in prison. Tunisia is an ally of the West in the fight against terrorism but is regarded by critics as a police or one-party state. Its secular Government regards those who advocate an Islamic state as a threat to its stability.

Read moreTerrorism adviser to Met police is on wanted list

Met Police officers to be ‘microchipped’ by top brass in Big Brother style tracking scheme

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CASPIAN RELEASES MICROCHIP CANCER REPORT



Met Chief Sir Ian Blair could be among 31,000 officers to receive the new electronic tracking device

Every single Metropolitan police officer will be ‘microchipped’ so top brass can monitor their movements on a Big Brother style tracking scheme, it can be revealed today.

According to respected industry magazine Police Review, the plan – which affects all 31,000 serving officers in the Met, including Sir Ian Blair – is set to replace the unreliable Airwave radio system currently used to help monitor officer’s movements.

The new electronic tracking device – called the Automated Personal Location System (APLS) – means that officers will never be out of range of supervising officers.

But many serving officers fear being turned into “Robocops” – controlled by bosses who have not been out on the beat in years.

According to service providers Telent, the new technology ‘will enable operators in the Service’s operations centres to identify the location of each police officer’ at any time they are on duty – whether overground or underground.

Although police chiefs say the new technology is about ‘improving officer safety’ and reacting to incidents more quickly, many rank and file believe it is just a Big Brother style system to keep tabs on them and make sure they don’t ‘doze off on duty’.

Some officers are concerned that the system – which will be able to pinpoint any of the 31,000 officers in the Met to within a few feet of their location – will put a complete end to community policing and leave officers purely at the beck and call of control room staff rather than reacting to members of the public on the ground.

Pete Smyth, chairman of the Met Police Federation, said: “This could be very good for officers’ safety but it could also involve an element of Big Brother.

“We need to look at it very carefully.”

Other officers, however, were more scathing, saying the new system – set to be implemented within the next few weeks – will turn them into ‘Robocops’ simply obeying instructions from above rather than using their own judgement.

One officer, working in Peckham, south London, said: “They are keeping the exact workings of the system very hush-hush at the moment – although it will be similar to the way criminals are electronically tagged. There will not be any choice about wearing one.

Read moreMet Police officers to be ‘microchipped’ by top brass in Big Brother style tracking scheme