Lying, cheating bastards funded by the State

[garlicbrain]

Today's Guardian carries an article about the long-term relationships formed by police spies working under cover. Their partners are in love with fictional characters, who may well be married in their real names but have fully credible false identities. When the job finishes, they disappear.

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/mar/01/police-spy-fictional-character

"Of the 11 undercover police officers publicly identified, nine had intimate sexual relations with activists. Most were long-term, meaningful relationships with women who believed they were in a loving partnership.

"Usually these spies were told to spend at least one or two days a week off-duty, when they would change clothes and return to their real lives. However, Jenner, who had a wife, appears to have lived more or less permanently with Alison, rarely leaving their shared flat in London.

"It was an arrangement that caused personal problems for the Jenners. At one stage, he is known to have attended counselling to repair his relationship with his wife. Bizarrely, at about the same time, he was also consulting a second relationship counsellor with Alison."

Can you imagine finding this out about your DP after he'd gone?

[garlicbrain]

Or about your policeman husband, obv.

[FireOverBabylon]

Bizaare, isn't it? I think at least one of them had a child whilst under cover as well, so their dad isn't who their mum thought he was.

[Oopla]

Can't quite work out how it's possible to split your personality/brain to carry that off!

[garlicbrain]

Really, Fire? The poor woman! How on earth can their bosses condone this?

It's systematic abuse, whichever way you look at it. The partners aren't counter-spies or anything, they're just normal people with political views who've been deliberately manipulated, gaslighted and abandoned with government approval.

[ThingummyBob]

Wonder if female undercover officers are encouraged to gain trust from radical groups by sleeping with the men involved?

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

From what I've read, one or two of these undercover police were left so much to their own devices they 'went native' and disregarded any actual training or instructions. So I'm not convinced that the accusation of 'with government approval' or condoning by bosses part actually applies... more a question of loose cannon that were badly mismanaged and applied no personal boundaries into the bargain

That said, you've only to read these boards for a while to realise that many people are not what they appear either literally or metaphorically. It's not confined to undercover police. Often facilitated by communication technology or jobs that make it easy to spend time away from home, many are leading effectively double lives and can lie to their partners as easily as others butter toast.

[PoppyField]

I love the fact that these police officers were working undercover with peaceful people interested in civil disobedience/social justice causes. Just what was the national interest in subverting these groups? I wonder if there are police wankers infiltrating English Defence League or even Ukip, in order to safeguard our national interest. Are they sleeping with lady-fascists in the name of our dear Queen? Are they shafting them as well? Or is it just the crusties and lefties that get horribly done over/ have their lives ruined at a cost of millions and millions of taxpayers money? I would like to know.

[ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmmmmmmmm]

Yeah, 'cos UKIP supporters are plotting to blow up power stations..hmm

[LapsedPacifist]

'Alison, a peaceful campaigner involved in leftwing political causes'

Plotting to blow up power stations?

[ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmmmmmmmm]

UKIP supporters ?

[garlicbrain]

What Cogito and Poppy said. These stories unnerved me greatly, for the two reasons that you've raised. Firstly, real people's personal lives are being hijacked for espionage purposes - they haven't agreed to act as 'cover': they are being abused. It is abuse because it misappropriates their love & trust for another purpose. That is a definition of abuse ("misuse" of trust.)

Secondly: these trusting, loving women were singled out as 'cover' - without their knowledge but with Home Office approval - due to their compliant nature and peripheral involvement with causes the State dislikes. It strikes me as bonkers - and cruel.

Cogito, spokespersons from the police & home office have been quick to defend the men's actions while covering their own arses. I think it's fair to assume quite a lot of this goes on - and probably women detectives, too.

What with the furore over LibDem whistleblowers highlighting sexual harassment at work, it's all getting a bit much for me right now :( I DON'T WANT officialdom to keep on excusing the abuse of women by men!

[LoopDeLoops]

I'd love to see the evidence that they were plotting to blow anything up. Firly sure that is simply untrue.

[garlicbrain]

YY, I think it's a given that they're just harmless souls with political concerns.

Seems to be that political concerns, which the govt thinks it might not like, render one susceptible to emotional & psychological abuse by police officers. Whose wages you're helping to pay, but you won't know that because they lie about what they do for a living!

I can't help wondering how many of these undercover police 'specialists' are plain old two-faced, misogynistic twunts who've manage to land the perfect job?

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

"I think it's fair to assume quite a lot of this goes on"

I think 'assumptions' are actually why the police are in the mess they are. My feeling is that stupidity and ignorance are more usually at the heart of cock-ups like this than malice or conspiracy. Of course the officers involved had probably got caught up in their own private James Bond/Spooks fantasy and, because they were mismanaged, no-one cottoned on to just how far outside protocol they'd strayed. The educational bar for joining the police force is set extremely low unfortunately.

[SolidGoldBrass]

Thing is, these police officers are human beings, as well. And human beings get strongly attracted to one another, even when they know it's a bad idea to act on an attraction to a particular person. So I can see that individual police officers would have embarked on relationships because they genuinely wanted to do so and had convinced themselves that no harm would be done ie they would date/have sex with another person and then the relationship would fizzle out and/or the assignment would end and the officer could move on without ever having to let the other person know that s/he had a false identity.
Also in some cases it might have been difficult to avoid a relationship without calling their own status or percieved status into question.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

There are uniformed police officers that have taken advantage of their status to have relationships with vulnerable women. A few of the nastier ones have been convicted of rape if I remember rightly. Crossing boundaries and abusing a position of authority is as old as the hills, even if - like teachers eloping with students - the key players think everyone is in a position to consent.

[FireOverBabylon]

Here

Relationships with 5 women and 1 man, and one possible child

[garlicbrain]

.. and those are just the cases whose details were released!

Operation Herne, the Met's investigation into the practices of one undercover unit, has cost £1.25m "with little to show in terms of results" and calls for "decisive action" to speed it up.

That's the investigation into one unit. I wonder how many there are, and how often it happens? Maybe next time someone posts a thread about their partner disappearing, or things not seeming to add up, we should immediately suspect he's an undercover cop? This is happening to their wives, too, as I don't imagine they mention their undercover family when on home leave.

SGB - they're explicitly encouraged to form relationships with target group members. If they were reasonable they'd keep such relationships light. As Cogito says, anything else is abuse.