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Police Spy Attempts to Undermine Lawrence's Family & Friends
Tuesday 25th June 2013 | Funmi
An investigation by the Guardian and Channel 4 Dispatches exposed that Peter Francis, a former undercover detective, admits that he was instructed by superiors to observe the political campaigns adjoining with Stephen Lawrence’s death. In simple terms, his main role was to ‘dig up some dirt’ on Stephen Lawrence’s family and any alliances. Francis explains that he disguised himself as an anti-racist activist for four years in the mid-90’s, under the name Pete Black. AS Pete Black, Francis was to gather information about his targets, in order to paint a bad image of Lawrence's friends and family and find any sort of information “along the lines of they the family were political activist or someone in the family was involved in demonstrations, drug dealers-anything”
His role was vastly shaped around working with information that was coming directly from the Lawrence’s home. In April 1993, Stephan was 18 when he was killed in a racist attack in Eltham, south-east London. At the tragic time of the death, the family was at one of it's most vulnerable points. The Family liaison officers took down the details of any family members as well as visitors that were coming in and out of the house. This information was passed to the area special branch, then to the special demonstration squad. This passed on material was finally presented to Francis and his fellow SDS officers, they were then asked to track these individuals to find out who they were, in terms of whether they were political activists or had any links to the political spectrum in general ; in other words whether they had any dirt on them which would illustrate them as black sheep. The motive behind this would enable the police to be one step ahead in the direction in which this would go in the public arena.
A further role was to follow Duwayne Brooks, Lawrence’s best friend and also main eyewitness of the murder and see if they could find any footage which painted him out to be a violent activist, which would enable him to be used as a scapegoat. Francis and a fellow SDS Officer found some footage of Brooke’s taking part in some ‘misconduct’ during the riots. Routinely, this footage was then passed onto the area special branch, from there to the special demonstration squad. To display the satisfaction of the findings, Brooks was later charged for his display of supposed criminality, however the case was eventually dropped as the Judge decided that it was an ‘abusive process.’
Doreen Lawrence’s Mother explains that the Francis’s exposure of the smear campaign makes her feel deeply saddened as their family had built a good rapport with the Police during the 20 years investigation since the death of her son. She goes on to add: "Nothing can justify the whole thing about trying to discredit the family and people around us."
Francis explains that one reason for his exposure is because he has seen many “morally wrong” things, therefore he has requested for a public enquiry into undercover policing.
Click on the video to watch Peter Francis’s confessions of his undercover role.
Feo @Feoblack
