Spycops Investigator Mick Creedon Retires
Mick Creedon, head of Operation Herne, the police’s self-investigation into spycops, is to retire in May.
He was appointed as head of Operation Herne in February 2013 after its former chief, Pat Gallan, gave combative and incompetant testimony to the Home Affairs Select Committee, notably refusing to apologise for the theft of dead children’s identities.
Though portrayed as an independent figure, Creedon was an old hand at spycops. As Derbyshire’s Assistant Chief Constable (Operations), he will have been briefed on undercover deployments in the county and personally authorised them.
Infamous officer Mark Kennedy went to a number of events in Derbyshire. It’s quite possible that Operation Herne already has custody of documents authorising Mark Kennedy’s abuses in Derbyshire bearing Creedon’s signature. For more, see the Undercover Research Group’s comprehensive profile of Mick Creedon.
Though Creedon rapidly issued a first Operation Herne report in which he admitted identity theft of dead children was standard practice in the undercover units, he didn’t give much else away. He said there would be little value in telling affected families and ‘raking up’ events for them.
Whilst he said that officers should not have deceived women into sexual relationships, he refused to apologise for it, saying,
there are many people involved in sexual relationships who lie about their status. There are many people who say they’re not married when they are married. It happens.
He ignored the fact that the spycops were not merely married but entirely fictitious personalities played by people who are the opposite of everything they claim to be, being paid to be in women’s lives in order to betray their most cherished values, trained, monitored and directed by an unseen team of state agents.
Creedon opposed calls for a public inquiry,saying nobody could do a better job of investigating police than other police.
There has always been public concern about police investigating the police, but I’ll be brutally honest: there is no one as good at doing it as the police. We don’t seek to hide things. We do actually seek to get the truth and we do it properly and I frankly find it almost insulting that people suggest that in some way, because I’m a police officer, I’m not going to search the truth.
Though Operation Herne issued three reports in a year and then a restricted fourth report in February 2015 of which we only have a redacted version, there has been nothing since.
Its staff level has fluctuated, and in July 2015 was reported as being 63, many of whom are Metropolitan police staff including serving officers. This is about three times the number at the Pitchford inquiry. Pitchford is still reliant on Herne as archivist and gatekeeper for police files.
It’s not clear who Creedon’s replacement will be. But then, it’s not clesr that it matters much. it will be another senior police officer with a reluctance to admit any wrongdoing despite the incontrovertible evidence.