Blogger’s Note: Jean Charles de Menezes – a Brazilian man – was murdered by British fire-arms whilst on his way to work one London morning in 2005. During the enquiry the police told one lie after another. An off-duty police officer travelling in the same Tube carriage that Jean Charles de Menezes was apprehended and shot in the head 12-times – stated under oath that he could not understand this lethal use of force on an unarmed and non-resisting suspect. The police, for no understandable reason, thought Jean Charles de Menezes was a “Muslim terrorist”. Meanwhile, I read at the time that the Tube-driver was pulled-off the train and held face-down on the floor with a gun to his head – whist fire-arms police screamed that they would find out where his wife and kids live. The unions stopped agitating when the driver was granted a substantial financial pay-out – I believe far more than the family of Jean Charles de Menezes. That family was flown over to London for a few weeks, apologised to, and given a comparative meagre financial settlement (I think around £300,000) – before being firmly placed on a flight back to Brazil. Around 20-years later, Starmer would order the quick round-up of 10,000 Brazilians in the UK for deportation – whilst illegally taking the British Citizenship of the children (so that entire families could be deported with no legal or moral issues resulting. To be clear, the Brazilians have done nothing wrong in the UK, and are here in relatively few numbers – and yet the British State has targetted this group whilst ignoring the groups that have caused trouble. Bear in-mind that the SDS came into being one year after the “Summer of Love” in 1968 – and was instigated by an incumbent Labour Party. It existed and weaved its evil webs throughout the UK until 2010 (between 2008-2010 it seems to have had a name-change to “National Public Order Intelligence Unit”) – and the election of a far-right Tory-LibDems Coalition (although it was during the outgoing of Labour Prime Minister of – Gordon Brown – that it ceased operations after years of complaints). I suspect groups like the Maoist Workers’ Institute were subject to its machinations over the years – machinations that are now considered both illegal and immoral. My views about the Guardian Newspaper remain unchanged. Stop lying about Neo-Nazi Ukraine and the Israeli Genocide and re-orientate your political compass firmly back toward the left. ACW (3.8.2026)
Senior officer behind closure says SDS caused ‘incalculable harm’ by infiltrating groups that posed no threat
Rob Evans – Sun 2 Aug 2026
An undercover police unit that spied on tens of thousands of political activists had to be shut down amid severe criticisms and recriminations, the spycops public inquiry has heard.
Jon Boutcher, a senior police officer who took over responsibility for the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) unit, concluded within months that it had to be wound up because it was conducting unjustified surveillance and was badly run.
He said most of the political groups being infiltrated “posed no threat to public order, let alone democracy”. They included pro-Palestinian supporters and leftwing groups.
In contrast, very few undercover officers were being directed to infiltrate terrorist groups, he said. “At that time, society faced an increasing and enduring threat from international terrorism from which people were losing their lives, while almost no undercover capability existed to infiltrate those dangerous terrorist groups.”
Boutcher, who was a detective chief superintendent in Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorist division at the time and is now the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said the unit had to be closed down “pretty quickly”.
The SDS had once been lauded as a “jewel in the crown” of Scotland Yard by its supporters within senior ranks.
In searing criticism from an officer who has been involved in leading covert policing for years, Boutcher said the “abusive and inappropriate behaviour” of the SDS undercover officers had damaged members of the public.
The officers routinely formed intimate relationships with women they were spying on without telling them their real identities. Boutcher said the “sexual abuse of many vulnerable women by some SDS operatives” caused “incalculable and intolerable harm”.
He said the SDS should never have spied on grieving families, such as the relatives of Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent man shot dead by police on the London Underground in 2005. Nor should they have collected highly intrusive information about protesters, such as their friendships and living arrangements.
The inquiry is examining the conduct of 139 undercover officers in the SDS and another covert unit who infiltrated mainly leftwing organisations between 1968 and at least 2010. They assumed fake identities and pretended to be political activists in deployments that usually lasted four years.
This week the inquiry heard how, in its final days, there was a “toxic” atmosphere between the unit and the more senior Scotland Yard ranks.
Boutcher, with the agreement of his superiors, disbanded the SDS in what he called “quite a groundbreaking” decision as it had been running covert operations for 40 years.
He said the SDS mounted “almost like a rearguard action” to justify its existence in what he characterised as a “very much siege mentality in many ways”.
He said he suspected the SDS was gathering an “extremely limited” amount of useful information, and asked the unit to draw up a list of its successes in the previous five years. During that time, the undercover officers had spied on environment groups, the Socialist Workers party and campaigns against racism and the arms trade.
The purported triumphs that were put forward by the SDS were “embellished and exaggerated”, almost “akin to fairytales”, Boutcher said.
He also said he was concerned that public money allocated to the unit was not properly accounted for.
The officers were claiming “vast amounts of overtime”, he said. When drastic cuts to these payments were proposed, many of them threatened to resign, the inquiry heard.
Boutcher said the unit was poorly trained, and all but one of the undercover officers refused to undergo further training.
Initially, Boutcher believed the SDS could be reformed and in particular re-oriented to infiltrate terrorist groups. But he concluded this was not possible because the SDS had become “insular and very parochial” and was resistant to change.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 