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Met officer 'sorry' over G20 policing

Liz | 26.01.2011 13:51 | G20 London Summit | Repression | Social Struggles | World

Police Commander Bob Broadhurst apologised today for misleading MPs about the use over undercover officers at the G20 protests.



Police Commander Bob Broadhurst apologised today for misleading MPs about the use over undercover officers at the G20 protests.

Mr Broadhurst admitted to the home affairs select committee that he had given "inaccurate" evidence that there had been no undercover police at the G20 protests in April 2009.

He said to MPs: "May I first of all apologise" for giving them "information that now appears to be inaccurate."

Mr Broadhurst had insisted in May 2009 that the Metropolitan Police "had no plain-clothes officers in the crowd" at the G20 protests.

But the Met were forced to admit he was wrong following a series of revelations sparked by former police spy Mark Kennedy's admission he was involved in the G20 protests.

Mr Broadhurst admitted he should have known about the deployment of undercover officers and said there was a review going on as to whether he should have asked or should have been informed.

Val Swain of Fitwatch, which monitors the police teams who gather intelligence on protesters, called for "a much greater level of honesty from the Met" over its policing of activists.

Scotland Yard chief Sir Paul Stephenson claimed after the G20 protests that using agents provocateurs would be "wholly antithetical to everything I have known about policing for the best part of 34 years."

Ms Swain said activists now needed to know "how undercover and plain-clothes police have been used on protests in the recent past."

She warned that undercover officers "have the ability to manipulate the behaviour of crowds - there cannot be any justification for this.

"We must make clear that there cannot be any justification for putting undercover police officers in protests, interfering with people's basic rights."

London Mayor Boris Johnson came under fire from Labour London Assembly Member Len Duvall for his "deafening silence" over the string of scandals facing the Met.

In his election manifesto, Mr Johnson pledged to take "personal responsibility" for the force.

Liz

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

Conflating bastard

26.01.2011 14:50

Actually the Mark Kennedy revelations are helping Broadhurst to wriggle off the hook here. He is conveniently and dishonestly conflating plainclothes cops with undercover ones and basing his excuses on not knowing about the latter.

There is, however, substantial evidence from the day of plain clothes cops -people nobody had ever seen before and looked very much like cops in jeans and baseball caps- doing their usual incitement, wind-up to tactically pointless violence, routine then, after the kettle had closed, flashing some sort of card to pass out of the kettle when nobody else could. Undercovers such as Mark Kennedy could not do this and would have been with people who then regarded him as a friend.

Stroppyoldgit


Ask him

26.01.2011 15:02



Why not ask him the question directly?

 Robert.J.Broadhurst@met.police.uk


kurious


Broadhusrt

26.01.2011 16:45

He's only sorru because he was caught lying like the cops always do, but not even a slap on the wrist from the MPs.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/nov/24/g20-undercover-police-broadhurst

Info


'Gold' Commander Broadhurst showing his ignorance again

26.01.2011 22:36

this time to the NUJ - all PR up to 9.27. then it gets interesting as he shows what a dim twat he is.

 http://vimeo.com/4803273?pg=transcoded_embed&sec=4803273

Info


plain clothes agents

27.01.2011 16:21

An incident of a man inciting the crowd who thought he was a cop, then waving a card at uniformed officers to be let out of the kettle was witnessed by Tom Brake MP, but is there anything to say such a person wasn't a journalist?

onlyme not a cop


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