Thread by @copscampaign

Next we hear from Philllippa Kaufmann QC again.
She is now speaking for 'Category H and J Core Participants' - John Burke-Monerville, Patricia
Armani Da Silva and Marc Wadsworth.

She will explain more about her clients, and what they seek from the @ucpinquiry

@ucpinquiry All three were involved in campaigns seeking answers and justice in respect of police violence, racism or corruption.

All three have reason to believe that they or their campaigns were subjected to undercover policing.

@ucpinquiry They have not been given any or any satisfactory explanation why, or how, or for what length of time they were spied on; who authorised it; or how the information gathered has been, or was intended to be, used.

@ucpinquiry They are very concerned about the number of justice campaigns who were similarly reported on by the SDS.

@ucpinquiry They are deeply sceptical about the explanation offered by the @metpoliceuk: that these groups were merely ‘collateral intrusion’ – accidentally ‘hoovered up’ in information gathered about other more ‘dangerous’ groups.

@ucpinquiry @metpoliceuk They all want answers in relation to their own cases, but they also want the Inquiry to confront the patterns that emerge from the repeated reporting on justice campaigns and the issues of institutional, structural and individual racism that underpin them.

@ucpinquiry @metpoliceuk Given the clear benefit to the police of having information with which to undermine groups campaigning against police violence, racism and corruption, the Inquiry is asked to scrutinise very carefully, with a penetrating sceptical gaze, the purported explanations of the police.

@ucpinquiry @metpoliceuk The @ucpinquiry is urged to examine the use to which any information gathered was or might have been put; and to assess the role that racism, both individual and institutional, played in undercover policing of justice campaigns.

John Burke-Monerville should now be enjoying his retirement with his wife, children, grandchildren and indeed great grandchildren.

Instead he finds himself in a public inquiry fighting to discover why he and his family were spied on by the Metropolitan
Police.

John's son, Trevor, disappeared in suspicious circumstances at the very beginning of 1987, and was found badly injured.
His family and friends set up a campaign to find out what had happened to him. Trevor never regained his memory, but was stabbed and killed in 1994

The family were persecuted and harrassed by the police - his mother was arrested and prosecuted in 1991 - she was aquitted and successfully sued for malicious prosecution

Another of their sons, Joseph, was shot and killed in 2013. Another son, David, was injured in this incident.
In June 2019, David was fatally stabbed.

He was approached by Operation Herne and told that they'd found evidence that his family justice campaign had been spied on

He says
"I feel a responsibility to my sons, myself, my family and my community to ensure that this Inquiry comes through with some sort of answers about why we
were spied on by the police.
We have not been told the truth by anybody in authority about anything all along...

"... I have no reason to be hopeful about the @ucpinquiry
No one in authority has given me that.
But I do remain hopeful. It is, though, my last hope & I am tired.
I don’t want my surviving children, grandchildren & great-grandchildren to go through what we are going through.”

@ucpinquiry Ms Armani Da Silva is the first cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian man who was shot and killed by police at Stockwell underground station on 22 July 2005, when he was mistaken for a suicide bomber.

@ucpinquiry To this day, the family have to correct the false impression that Jean Charles contributed in some way to his own death.
The police have sought to deflect, distract and mislead the public

@ucpinquiry The police even threatened to leak a story to the press alleging that Jean Charles had committed a rape.

To this day, Ms Da Silva cannot prove that the police was the source of all of the false information (eg that Jean Charles was an illegal immigrant), but @realspycop reported that #spycops were routinely tasked with finding info with which to discredit family campaigns like hers

@realspycop In 2014 her family was shown 5 (redacted) intelligence reports by Operation Herne.
These included info about individuals' political beliefs.
She was told that she could submit a request to the @metpoliceuk for details but they have refused to provide any.

@realspycop @metpoliceuk Ms Armani Da Silva has not to date been provided with any further information as to how or why the campaign for justice for Jean Charles de Menezes was the subject of undercover policing

@realspycop @metpoliceuk Mr Marc Wadworth is a journalist, historian and campaigner. In 1991, he founded and led the Anti-Racist Alliance - Europe’s largest black-led anti-racism movement - that comprised faith groups, civil organisations, MPs from all the main parties, and trade unions

@realspycop @metpoliceuk In 1993, Mr Wadsworth assisted the family of Stephen Lawrence to set up their campaign for justice and introduced them to the lawyer Imran Khan QC.
He also facilitated a meeting
between the Lawrence family and Nelson Mandela.

He has also made requests to the @metpoliceuk for the data they hold on him. So far all he has received are one redacted document and one report.
The police have refused to either confirm or deny whether the
ARA or its members were subjected to surveillance

@metpoliceuk All three of these Core Participants have an overwhelming need to know the truth:
not just about how, why and by whom they were spied upon; but about the deeper systemic truths about the SDS

They want to know the truth about Peter Francis’ allegations of the targeting of justice campaigns; and they want the racism inherent in the view of justice campaigns as trouble-makers to be recognised and addressed

The issue of racism as a motivation for some aspects of the SDS’ reporting and deployments must be at the heart of the @ucpinquiry , including in respect of the “direct penetration” or “close monitoring” of the Justice for Trevor Monerville Campaign

@ucpinquiry What were the motivations for the #spycops infiltration?

a desire to derail and discredit the campaign’s attempts to bring to light racist police brutality and subsequent harassment? (as Mr Burke-Monerville fears)

@ucpinquiry or the targeting of “extreme” left-wing groups who are said to have infiltrated
family justice campaigns, such as the Justice for Trevor Campaign? (as the
police have, to date, maintained)

@ucpinquiry The third Operation Herne report identifies 17 Black justice campaigns that are mentioned in the SDS records between 1970 and 2005

@ucpinquiry Peter Francis has alleged that the SDS had infiltrated Black justice campaigns and effectively
thwarted their activities:
“My presence in the groups made that justice harder to
obtain… Once the SDS get into an organisation, it is effectively finished.”

@ucpinquiry According to Francis, his superiors wnated him to collect 'dirt' about the Lawrences, in order to undermine public sympathy for them

@ucpinquiry He said
"Had I found out anything detrimental – and newsworthy – about the Lawrence family, the police, using the media then, would have used that information to smear the family.
My superiors were after any intelligence of that order."

@ucpinquiry The absence of written records makes it hard to get to the trith.
Mark Ellison QC carried out a review , and in his report said “In light of the limited records available, little weight can be attached to the
absence of a record"

We know that many instructions were delivered to #spycops verbally, rather than put in writing.

Given the context, an absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.

The @ucpinquiry has largely excluded non state core participants from meaningful participation:
by restricting cover names;
by compartmentalising non-state CPs into narrow categories of “direct interest”, determined by the Inquiry;

@ucpinquiry and by holding, at least, the initial hearings in circumstances where only a tiny number of non-state CPs and members of the public will be able to see and hear the evidence.

@ucpinquiry Another huge issue for these clients has been the Inquiry's ability to explore and assess the issue of #InstitutionalRacism

@ucpinquiry There can be few people nowadays, including in the field of dispensing justice, who have not heard of the term ‘unconscious bias’.

@ucpinquiry Many different types of biases have been identified but some are of particular importance in relation to the issues of racial (and sexual) inequality (and political policing) which arise in this Inquiry

@ucpinquiry 'Ingroup bias' (meaning that we tend to unfairly favour someone from our own group) is informed by the wider social and cultural forces at work.

There is ample evidence that empathy tends to favour the 'ingroup', & that these biases are ingrained in us all from a very young age

@ucpinquiry Kaufmann is continuing to explain (patiently) to Sir Mitting why all of this is relevant to the @ucpinquiry
This is not a purely theoretical concern: Mitting himself has steadfastly failed to recognise the risk of unconscious bias

@ucpinquiry At a meeting with Burke-Monerville in December 2018, the Chair's response to these concerns illustrated precisely his lack of awareness of how his background and life experiences shape the way he sees the world

@ucpinquiry Mitting claims that he will take the "approach of a historian" but Marc Wadsworth, himself a historian, has garve concerns about this view of historical analysis as an objective process, not shaped by the culture and society in which the hiostoran was raised.

@ucpinquiry You have displayed a lack of understanding of these issues, and refused to recognise your own biases.
Despite a lack of knowledge of Burke-Monerville's case, you made a huge assumption - said you broadly accepted the police's own narrative re 'collatoral intrusion'

@ucpinquiry Burke Monerville says:
"It is painful for me to read about my own children being killed. I read that you don’t need a panel to help you understand racism properly. You do not know much about racism..."

@ucpinquiry " I’ve read some of the comments that you made about racism. I think you need additional people to look at the evidence with you and to help you make decisions especially relating to racism. "

" I would like to know why you think you can do this without help when you have no experience of racism and no discrimination training.”

Mittings' response provided yet another illustration of his deep lack of understanding - he likened the family's losses to deaths in wartime.

"whilst well meaning, the Chair’s
analogy with war time loss misses such a critical aspect of Mr Burke-Monerville’s loss – that it did not occur in conditions of war, but on the streets of London, where he
& his family ought to be able to expect a reasonable level of protection"

"..and police investigations capable of identifying suspects and bringing them to trial; but he does
not have that, because of the colour of his skin"

"For all of these reasons, Mr Burke-Monerville, Ms Armani Da Silva and Mr Wadsworth wish formally to record that they hold out little hope for this Inquiry’s ability to get to
the truth"

Mitting has made yet another patronising/ insensitive comment, saying that of all the CPs, Burke-Monerville has the "largest cross to bear", and ended today's hearing

the @spycopsinquiry is due to resume at 10am tomorrow, Tuesday 10th