Report: Undercover police had kids with activists
Jan 20, 2012, 11:23 PM
LONDON (AP) – Britain’s Guardian newspaper said Friday that two undercover police officers have fathered children with the activists they were spying on.
Key details were hazy but the revelations are the latest in a series of reports which has cast doubt on whether undercover police in the U.K. go too far in seeking to infiltrate environmental, animal rights and extremist groups.
British authorities are already preparing a report into the use of undercover officers after one of them caused a trial to collapse when his cover was blown.
The Guardian said that two other police operatives had children while on the job, although the timing of the officers’ alleged relationships is unclear.The paper said one of them fathered a child in the 1980s and that another one did so “some years ago.” The paper said it was withholding the women and children’s names for reasons of privacy.
The newspaper cited one of the now-former police operatives and an unnamed second person as the source for its reporting. An email seeking comment from the ex-officer named in the article was not immediately returned late Friday.
A spokeswoman for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, the police body which is looking into the use of undercover officers, said she was checking to see whether the group could comment on report, which is due out in the Guardian’s Saturday edition but was available online late Friday.
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