Andy Coles then and now

A Metropolitan Police investigation has upheld a complaint by a woman deceived into a relationship by former undercover officer Andy Coles.

The Met have found Jessica’s claims credible and ruled that Coles would face charges of gross misconduct if he were still a serving officer.

It’s a huge blow to Coles, who has consistently denied Jessica’s account of his abuse as he tries to shore up his crumbling credibility as a city councillor and public figure.

ANDY COLES: LYING THEN

Andy Coles was a member of the Metropolitan Police’s disgraced Special Demonstration Squad. In the 1990s he spent four years undercover as peace and animal rights activist ‘Andy Davey’. Like many other officers in Britain’s political secret police, Coles abused his role to deceive women into sexual relationships. The most significant of these was a woman known as ‘Jessica’.

Jessica was, as Coles knew, a vulnerable teenager at the time. He told her he was a 24 year old who shared her worldview and became her first proper boyfriend. In reality, he was 32 and married, paid to be sent into her life to betray the values she held dear.

The relationship lasted a year. Two other women, Emily and Joy, have also spoken about being the target of his unwanted sexual attentions during his deployment.

Coles went on to have a career in Special Branch, managing and training other officers for the same role as he’d held.

He retired from the police in 2012, about a year after the spycops scandal broke. In Peterborough he became a Conservative member of the City Council for Fletton and Woodston ward, and was appointed to the post of Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Cambridgeshire.

When he was exposed in 2017, Coles resigned as Deputy PCC within hours without explanation. However, seemingly believing lower standards apply to councillors than Deputy PCCs, he did not step down as a councillor. Every council meeting since then has seen protests calling for his resignation. His seat will be up for re-election in May this year.

ANDY COLES: LYING NOW

A year later, in 2018, the Undercover Policing Inquiry confirmed that he had indeed been a Special Demonstration Squad officer. Coles released two prepared statements to the press, which only confirmed what the Inquiry had said, and flatly denied what he called the ‘lurid allegations’ made by Jessica:

‘The allegation the ALF activist known as “Jessica” makes that I had a sexual relationship with her for over a year while undercover are [sic] completely untrue’.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry, which has access to secret police files, had already granted Jessica ‘core participant’ status in August 2017. They have only given that designation to around 200 of the most seriously affected victims of spycops. Clearly, they find her account credible too.

Through his lawyer, he told the media yesterday that he still denies having ‘an inappropriate relationship’ with Jessica.

Now that the relationship is officially regarded as credible, he is perhaps trying to insert some room for manoeuvre and suggests that even if he did have a relationship it was somehow ‘appropriate’. That quite plainly cannot be true, as has been repeatedly and unequivocally established by a range of senior officers and official investigations.

NEVER APPROPRIATE

Chief Constable Mick Creedon produced a series of reports on the political secret police under the aegis of Operation Herne, and in 2014 he was clear:

‘There are and never have been any circumstances where it would be appropriate for such covertly deployed officers to engage in intimate sexual relationships with those they are employed to infiltrate and target. Such an activity can only be seen as an abject failure of the deployment, a gross abuse of their role and their position as a police officer and an individual and organisational failing.’

Operation Herne – Report 2: Allegations of Peter Francis (Operation Trinity)

When the Metropolitan Police gave their landmark apology to women deceived into relationships in 2015, two years before Jessica found out the truth about Coles, they said:

‘some officers, acting undercover whilst seeking to infiltrate protest groups, entered into long-term intimate sexual relationships with women which were abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong… these relationships were a violation of the women’s human rights, an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma. The forming of a sexual relationship by an undercover officer would never be authorised in advance nor indeed used as a tactic of a deployment’.

Jon Murphy from the Association of Chief Police Officers explained it when the scandal broke in 2011, at a time when Coles was employed by the Association:

‘It is grossly unprofessional. It is a diversion from what they are there to do. It is morally wrong because people have been put there to do a particular task and people have got trust in them. It is never acceptable under any circumstances… for them to engage in sex with any subject they come into contact with.’

When his deployment ended in 1995, Andy Coles updated the Special Demonstration Squad’s Tradecraft Manual to incorporate his experience and methods, including tips on conducting the kinds of relationship he now denies having.

After this, he trained the first undercover officers in the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), a new sister unit to the Special Demonstration Squad, teaching them to steal the identities of dead children. He went on to become Head of Training for the NPOIU’s oversight body ACPO-TAM as they deployed a number of the most notorious spycops who committed the same kind of abuses, such as Mark Kennedy.

WHAT’S HE GOT TO HIDE?

During the Met’s investigation into Jessica’s complaint, Coles was interviewed twice under caution and both times he supplied a prepared statement. He refused to answer questions.

Why did he resign as Deputy PCC? Why did he refuse to answer questions put to him by his old colleagues at the Metropolitan Police? Why does he continually refuse to comment, except to confirm what’s officially concretely established and deny the rest?

These are not the actions of someone who believes they have done nothing wrong. They are more like the response of someone who is desperately trying to hide from the truth.

The fact that his old colleagues at the Met, not known for their bias against themselves, have found Jessica’s report of a relationship credible makes Coles’s desperate denials appear transparently false.

He has doubled down, telling today’s Peterborough Telegraph:

‘The Metropolitan Police has taken no further action against me’

That’s an extraordinary response to the Met upholding a complaint against him and announcing that they would bring the most serious disciplinary charges against him if only it were still in their power to do so.

Despite the Met’s investigators having spoken to many people who knew Coles and Jessica at the time, and seen documentary proof such as contemporaneous letters, Coles desperately repeats his lie:

‘I deny the accusations made completely. I denied them when they were first made, I deny them now’

While his current friends and colleagues on the council may forgive his abuse of a woman thirty years ago, if he admits it happened it means he has been lying to them since 2017. They would not look so benevolently on that. So he goes on, as the evidence piles up all around him, lying to his peers and compounding the damage he has done to Jessica.

STALLING AS HIS LIES ARE FALLING

Coles is still refusing to answer, merely saying through his lawyer that ‘it would not be appropriate to respond outside of the Inquiry’.

He talks as if the Inquiry is a court and he might prejudice a fair trial. It’s yet another deceit he is playing on the public. He knows full well that the inquiry process does not restrict him at all and that he is at liberty to say what he wants. Any number of former spycops have given interviews to television and press, made public appearances, one even hired a publicity agent.

Coles knows this is merely a way to kick the can down the road. Though the Inquiry is not a court of any kind, it is as slow as any process in the judicial system. Initiated six years ago and originally scheduled to conclude in summer 2018, it has yet to begin. There are no dates set for officers from Coles’ era to give evidence, and the whole thing is not expected to finish until 2025 at the earliest.

It leaves Coles continuing in his respected public role while Jessica – and the wider public – still wait for the truth about full extent of Britain’s counter-democratic secret police units.

Jessica said:

‘I’m pleased the complaint was upheld however I am disappointed at the lack of accountability. Andy Coles was allowed to retire in 2013 at a time when the revelations about undercover officers having sexual relationships and even children with unsuspecting women had started to come out. I would like to know what his superior officers knew or ought to have known about our relationship. Was he properly supervised?

‘Kate Wilson is in court later this week fighting to find answers to what happened to her. Her relationship with an undercover police officer happened a decade after mine. This is not historic abuse. It’s systematic and institutionalised sexism in the police.’

Men who abuse their public roles to violate women should not be in positions of civic trust. This isn’t just about what he did 30 years ago, appalling as that was. This is also about his unrelenting deviousness and lack of integrity today.

The Sack Andy Coles campaign has protested at every Peterborough Council meeting since the truth was revealed. Join us at the next one on Wednesday 4 March 2020, 5pm at Peterborough Town Hall.

And whether you can be at the protest or not, please sign and share the petition launched by one of Coles’ fellow councillors calling on him to resign.

Originally published by Sack Andy Coles

Kate Wilson outside the Royal Courts of Justice

Join us outside court on 27 February 2020 to support Kate Wilson in the next hearing of her landmark human rights case that could lay bare the inner workings and chain of command of Britain’s political secret police.

Kate was deceived into a long-term, intimate relationship with an undercover Metropolitan police officer, Mark Kennedy. She is bringing a case to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, Britain’s special court for human rights affected by state surveillance.

Even before the full case is heard, these preliminary hearings have brought significant victories. The Met said they concede Kate’s claim that they violated her fundamental right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The Met also admitted that there are many thousands of relevant documents, and the sample seen shows the fine detail in which her relationship with Kenedy was recorded, detailing a dozen visits to stay with her parents, even describing gifts he bought for her. Kennedy’s ‘handler’ officer watched them together.

It’s demolished the Met’s wall of denial, built up over years claiming such relationships were the actions of rogue officers acting without management approval.

Kate is one of eight women whose legal case against the Met elicited the police’s historic apology of 2015 in which we were told:

‘The forming of a sexual relationship by an undercover officer would never be authorised in advance nor indeed used as a tactic of a deployment’

That came a year after another official report into the spycops scandal was equally unquivocal:

‘There are and never have been any circumstances where it would be appropriate for such covertly deployed officers to engage in intimate sexual relationships with those they are employed to infiltrate and target.

‘Such an activity can only be seen as an abject failure of the deployment, a gross abuse of their role and their position as a police officer and an individual and organisational failing.’

– Chief Constable Mick Creedon, ‘Operation Herne – Report 2‘, 2014

We now have proof that those statements are lies. If this comes from a 200 page sample of the 10,000 pages that mention Kate, imagine what there is in the rest.

The demo is outside Kate’s hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday 27 February, 9.30am. Here’s an event listing for more details on that.

As for the basis of the case itself, here are the specifics:

Spycops Breaching Human Rights

Kate’s asserting that the Metropolitan Police breached five article of the European Convention of Human Rights:

Article 3

Article 3 prohibits torture and “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. This is an absolute right, there are no circumstances that make this treatment acceptable.

“I have experienced  the psychological damage that these operations can cause. It is deep  and it is long lasting, and I think that the intrusiveness and the  psychological violence that is inherent in these tactics, and not just  the sexual relationships, but the intimacy, the abuse of trust, which is  completely inherent to any undercover policing operation could be  seriously underestimated by anyone who has not been subjected to that  tactic.”
– Kate Wilson

In their 2015 apology, the Metropolitan Police admitted the relationships were a “gross violation of personal dignity and integrity,” and said officers “preyed on the women’s good nature and had manipulated their emotions to a gratuitous extent.”

These relationships caused serious long-term harm and psychological trauma to the victims and others close to them. This, and the nature of the deception involved, mean they were violations of Article 3.  If this is upheld in court, a change in the law around the authorisation of intimate relationships by undercover officers might be forced.

“What happened to us has been akin to psychological torture”
– ‘Lisa’

“It turns your life upside down. Everything that you thought you knew suddenly becomes unreal; everything changes. You do not know who you can trust any more. It destroys everything.”
– Helen Steel

Article 8

Article 8 provides a right to respect for one’s private and family life, home and correspondence.

“I have been abused in by an undercover police officer who was sent into my life, into my home, into my parents’ home, and into my bed by the Metropolitan Police.”
– Kate Wilson

Intimate and sexual relationships by undercover officers concealing their real identity from the other person/s in the relationship/s represent a clear violation of the right to respect for private and family life. These relationships involved intrusion into people’s families, with some officers attending family funerals, and helping women through the grieving process. In their Apology, the Met Police admitted it was a “gross violation” of the women’s privacy.

“I met him when I was 29, and he disappeared about three months before I was 35. It was the time when I wanted to have children”
– ‘Alison’

Articles 10 & 11

Article 10 provides the right to freedom of expression, and Article 11 protects the right to freedom of assembly and association, including the right to form trade unions.

“I have been the subject of systematic surveillance and violations of my intimacy, my right to privacy, and my bodily integrity, for at least the last 18 years by police forces that are cooperating across European borders. Put simply it is a story of human rights abuse and persecution  by secret political police because of my beliefs and political activities”
– Kate Wilson

Women have been targeted because of their participation in social justice campaigns. Intimate and sexual relationships have been used as a tactic  to infiltrate campaigning and political organisatons. These relationships resulted in real psychological harm, violating the right to freedom of expression, and the right to freedom of assembly and association.

Any “like-minded activist” was considered a valid target for infiltration, and further authorisation was not sought for their inclusion into the operation, regardless of their relevance to any investigation. This approach clearly interferes with the right  to freedom of expression, and the right to freedom of assembly and association.

“There is probably more damage and violence that happens on a regular basis on a Friday night in town centres when people get drunk, but there is not a proposal to infiltrate every pub in the country on the off-chance that you are going to be able to prevent violence and damage. This is about political policing and trying to interfere with what is actually a recognised right to freedom of association and freedom of expression.”
– Helen Steel

“It has had a massive impact on my political activity…I suspected within about a month of his disappearance, and after about 18 months of different searches I came to believe it… I withdrew from political activity.”
– ‘Alison’

Article 14

Article 14 contains a prohibition of discrimination.

The relationships perpetrated by undercover police officers have overwhelomingly been men preying on women. It is institutional sexism. Undercover officers having sexual relationships with female activists plainly has a discriminatory effect on women being able to exercise their human rights under Articles 3, 8, 10 and 11.

“This highlights the sexist mindset that thought that it was acceptable for  the police to abuse women, and derail our lives in order to shore up the fake identities of these undercover policemen so they could undermine political movements and campaign groups.”
– Helen Steel

Qualified Human Rights

Whilst Article 3 – the right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment – is an absolute right, Articlethe others in Kate’s claim are qualified rights that can be breached in certain circumstances. But interference is permissible only if there is a legal basis, the interference is necessary in a democratic society, or the interference is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by carrying it out.

There is nothing in law which states that if a police officer suspects an  individual of involvement with a political movement, that officer is entitled to have a sexual relationship with the person to try to find out.

Sexual and intimate relationships cannot be said to be necessary – there are a multitude of reasons why any individual might decline to  become intimate with another person.  Given the level of invasion of privacy and the serious psychological harm caused by such relationships they cannot be thought of as proportionate for getting information on political campaign groups.

‘Collateral Intrusion’ and Human Rights

“He is in my mother’s wedding photograph, and I and my current partner have to see him in that.”
– ‘Alison’

Intrusion into the lives of people associated with the targets of the undercover officers is termed by the police ‘Collateral Intrusion.’ Perversely, its  authorisation appears to require less rigorous tests than intrusion into the lives of “suspects”

The depth of the intrusion into the claimants’ lives also meant a deep  intrusion into the lives of family members and close friends. For example, undercover police officers “infiltrated” deeply emotional family gatherings such as funerals, weddings and birthday celebrations. The psychological harm inflicted, not only on the claimants, but on close members of our family – including infirm, elderly relatives, and forming significant bonds with children – cannot be justified.

“There is no justification for somebody coming to my father’s funeral with me. There was no justification for putting an undercover cop into my family’s life.”
– ‘Lisa’

Collateral Intrusion is, it seems, a euphemism for violating the fundamental human rights of people who are not even the specific subjects of  surveillance, without any real consideration of the psychological damage that such deep deceptions might cause.

In the same way that it is not considered necessary and proportionate for undercover officers to form intimate sexual relationships, it is always wholly inappropriate for a police officer to insert themselves into extended families, in the way that being part of long-term relationships would necessitate.

Instead of being seen as ‘Collateral Intrusion’ that can be easily authorised, every individual whose Article 8 Human Rights may be breached by an operation should be afforded the respect of having the merits of that intrusion specifically considered and recorded, including the specific reasons why it is considered necessary and proportionate.

Join us outside court on 27 February 2020 to demand truth and justice for Kate Wilson and a nation whose political life has been corrupted by spycops.

Originally published by Police Spies Out of Lives.