Thread by @sackandycoles

This week, #spycops officer Andy Coles will be questioned by the Undercover Policing Inquiry. Unique among officers who deceived women into relationships, he has flatly denied that it ever happened. What exactly did he do, & what will the Inquiry be asking him about?🧵(1/18)

In Peterborough, Andy Coles was known as a school governor, Conservative city councillor, & Cambridgeshire’s Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner.
But in 2017, his dark secret was revealed.
(2/18)
theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/m…

In the 1990s Coles was an undercover officer in the Metropolitan Police’s disgraced Special Demonstration Squad. This secret unit spied on thousands of political parties & groups from Labour MPs to revolutionary communists to hedgehog rescue.
(3/18)
theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/j…

Running since 1968 without proper oversight, the #spycops became a law unto themselves. Many officers abused their role to deceive women they spied on into sexual relationships.
(4/18)
campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2015/11/20/pol…

Spying on peace & animal rights groups, Coles subjected women to unwanted aggressive sexual advances. Though 32 & married he said he was 24 & single as he groomed vulnerable teenager @Jessica_me2 into a relationship. Coles denies everything about it (5/18)
policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/our-stories/je…

Targeting women this way was endemic in the Special Demonstration Squad. Andy Coles personally wrote the unit’s manual with tips on how to conduct these relationships he now claims he didn’t engage in. He went on to Special Branch management.
(6/18)
ucpi.org.uk/publications/s…

When the truth came out in 2017, Coles resigned as Cambridgeshire's Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner within hours. He refused to explain why.
(7/18)
bbc.com/news/uk-englan…

Coles only admitted even having been an #spycops officer a year later, because the public inquiry had named him.
(8/18)
sackandycoles.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/spy…

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has granted @Jessica_me2 ‘core participant’ status, something only given to around 200 of the most seriously affected victims of these units.
(9/18)
ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/upl…

When interviewed about it under caution by police, Coles refused to answer questions. In July 2023, the Metropolitan Police admitted that the relationship did happen, & that it should never have happened. They unreservedly apologised to Jessica.
(10/18)
theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/f…

Yet Coles not only doubled down on his denials again, he also told the Peterborough Telegraph he was effectively exonerated because ‘the Metropolitan Police has taken no further action against me’.
(11/18)
peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/crime/pet…

That’s an extraordinary interpretation of the Met upholding a complaint against him & saying they would bring the most serious disciplinary charges against him if only it were still in their power to do so. But his friends in Peterborough Conservatives want to believe it.
(12/18)

Coles says Jessica’s lying. If that’s true:
❎All her friends & family the Met spoke to who knew her when she was with Coles must be lying
❎Friends who still have contemporaneous letters talking about the relationship, examined by the Met, must have forged it all
(13/18)

❎The Undercover Policing Inquiry- which has the secret police files confirming details – must be wrong to have made her a core participant
❎The Met’s investigators must have been hoodwinked, or are lying too
All that must be true or Coles is lying. It’s one or the other
(14/18)

Andy Coles has backed himself into a corner. If he admits the truth, it wouldn’t just be about his abuse of Jessica 30 years ago - he’d also be admitting lying to colleagues in Peterborough Conservatives (of whom he is president) today.
(15/18)

So Andy Coles has continued to lie while the overwhelming proof has piled up around him. This week at the #spycops public inquiry, he should be shown up for the cruel liar that he is. It's likely to be livestreamed on the Inquiry's YouTube channel.
(16/18)
ucpi.org.uk/hearing/ucpi-e…

The public inquiry granted anonymity to most #spycops. Some got it just because friends & neighbours might think badly of them if they knew the truth. Andy Coles, with numerous roles in public life, would surely have got it too had he not been fully unmasked by activists.
(17/18)

Andy Coles isn't anomalous among #spycops for his behavour, just for being named. Men who abuse public roles to violate women shouldn't be in positions of civic trust. How many more are out there, able to continue abuses because the public inquiry protects them?
(18/18)