Secret policing campaigners criticise Scottish inquiry

The Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS) has criticised the Scottish government’s decision to ask the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMIC) to carry out a review of secret policing, The Ferret reports.

Justice Secretary Michael Matheson directed HMICS last month to carry out an independent review of undercover policing activities in Scotland.

The move followed the UK government’s refusal to extend the Pitchford Inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales despite evidence pointing towards units from south of the border operating in Scotland.

Following public meetings organised by COPS in Dundee and Glasgow, a spokesperson for the group told The Ferret: “The inquiry commissioned by the Scottish government has been handed to the most inappropriate body in Scotland. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) is a body of senior police officers.

“Their English counterpart, HMIC, already have a track record of whitewash on this very issue with their discredited report from 2012. The Chief Constable of Scotland, Phil Gormley, oversaw both spycops units. His wife works for HMIC. In light of these facts, the decision to use HMICS appears not merely useless but actively corrupt.

“The Metropolitan police concede that the sexual relationships with women they spied on was ‘manipulative, abusive and wrong’ and a breach of the women’s human rights. Several of these relationships were furthered in Scotland but will be ignored as the HMICS report has arbitrarily been limited to events after 2000.

“No other group would be allowed to self-investigate. If there were a secret unit of doctors performing unethical experiments on patients without consent, nobody would think their colleagues should be the ones to look into it, with a remit prohibiting examination of 80 per cent of the period that the outrages occurred.”