by Tony Iozzo
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe
LONDON, England – British Prime Minister David Cameron ordered an investigation into a former undercover police officer’s claims that he was ordered to spy on the family of the black victim of one of Britain’s most notorious racially-motivated murders.
The former police officer, Peter Francis, has stated that superior officers at Scotland Yard, formally the Metropolitan Police Service, ordered him to investigate and find any information that could be used against the members of the victim’s family, specifically to determine whether any individuals were political activists, involved in public demonstrations, or drug dealers.
The victim, 18 year old Stephen Lawrence, was stabbed to death at a London bus stop on April 22, 1993. He and his friend, Duwayne Brooks, were waiting for a bus on their way home from night classes, and were victimized by a white youth-gang.
Francis, who reported to The Guardian newspaper on Monday, said that he posed as an anti-racist activist with three other officers and infiltrated the Youth Against Racism in Europe, a group led by Lawrence’s parents that held protests.
Francis said that the spying was to discredit the Lawrence family’s campaign against racial violence because senior officers believed that the public protests could trigger Rodney King-esque rioting similar to the events in Los Angeles in 1992.
“They wanted the campaign to stop. It was felt that it was going to turn into an elephant,” Francis stated.
These allegations are the latest controversy in a case that has had its fair share. An official report by a high court judge found that “institutional racism” via insensitivity and lack of investigative rigor tainted the original investigation. Last year, 19 years after the killing, two men were convicted of the murder.
Cameron has promised that government investigators would “get rapidly to the bottom of what’s happened” and “get the full truth out.”
“To hear that, potentially, the police that were meant to be helping them were actually undermining them-that’s horrific,” Cameron stated.
Home secretary Theresa May, the overseer of policing in Britain, has stated that two existing probes into police misconduct would investigate Francis’ claims.
Bugged Meetings
Amid these assertions by Francis, an additional claim has surfaced, suggesting that the Metropolitan Police secretly recorded its officers’ meetings with Brooks, the friend of Lawrence who was with him the night of the killing in 1993.
BBC reported on Tuesday that a senior police source from the Metropolitan Police stated that orders were given to record two meetings between Brooks, his lawyers, and the police officers.
Brooks’ lawyer, Jane Deighton, stated that she was under the impression that the purpose of the meetings were to brief Brooks and her colleagues on the progress of the investigation into Lawrence’s murder.
“Under the guise of briefing us they were covertly recording us.”
Scotland Yard said it was investigating these additional claims and treating them with “huge seriousness.”
For more information, please see:
BBC News – Lawrence Friend Duwayne Brooks “Bugged by Police” – 25 June 2013
The Guardian – Stephen Lawrence’s Mother to Meet Home Secretary Over Smear Claims – 25 June 2013
The Independent – Stephen Lawrence Case Witness Was Secretly Recorded by Police – 25 June 2013
Al Jazeera – UK Police Spied on Race Victim’s Family – 24 June 2013
New York Times – In Britain, New Inquiry is Ordered in Bias Killing – 24 June 2013
New York Times – Two Sentenced to Prison in Racial Killing That Scarred Britain – 4 January 2012
