In the Media

Police spies secretly had children with activists | Rob Evans

PUBLISHED January 24, 2012
SHARE

Two police spies had children with activists they were spying on and then disappeared from their lives. Are there others?

Over the weekend we reported that two undercover police officers had secretly fathered children with political activists they had been sent to spy on and later disappeared completely from the lives of their offspring.

One of the officers was Bob Lambert who infiltrated animal rights and environmental campaigns in the 1980s, the other was not named.

The disclosure kicked off a lot of discussion on Twitter. Outrage seemed to be the order of the day. It is fair to say that the vast majority of people were critical of the police's behaviour.

Here's a quick sample of comments

OwenJones84 :"This shocking episode of police infiltration of an activist group may be the tip of an iceberg":

LuisaEtc :"The horrifying extent to which police spies have abused activist women they were sent to spy on";

murraygw :"Undercover police spies had children with activists. gu.com/p/34m2x < Yet still no public inquiry...";

MerrickBadger : "Undercover policing even worse than we thought."

But now the question which is floating around is - were there other undercover police officers who had kids with activists? I would not be surprised if there were. A large number of police officers have been sent undercover in political groups over the last forty years. We still only know a fraction of what went on.

guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

CATEGORIES