The undercover policing inquiry is investigating dead children’s stolen identities, but there’s a massive problem

Adding insult to injury

If that wasn’t enough, there is also no guarantee that respondents will hear back, even if police did take their child’s identity. Pitchford states:

If you are considering making contact with the Undercover Policing Inquiry because you wish to know whether your deceased child’s name was used to create a police undercover identity, it is important that you should know that the Inquiry may be unable to give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to your question, even after the Inquiry has concluded its work and knows the answer.

In any case, police have admitted that the number of stolen children’s identities is at least 42. And the real figure could be much higher.

Publish the cover names

For this reason (among many others), activists and campaigners with ‘core participant‘ status – those who have a significant known link to the issue – are now calling for the inquiry to publish the cover names.

A letter signed by many of those targeted states:

Without this basic information, it is effectively impossible for the Inquiry to have a full picture of undercover policing. The only Core Participants in any position to give even a partial summary of facts they might eventually rely upon are the limited number who have already themselves researched and revealed, largely by chance, the existence of undercover officers, or those who have been informed by the media they had been subject to covert surveillance. Even then, it is difficult for non-state core participants and witnesses to contribute in any meaningful way while virtually all the documentary evidence remains in the hands of the police.

If victims of undercover policing are to receive any semblance of justice, the public inquiry must publish the cover names. Without full disclosure, those who were spied on will not know who targeted them or why. This is particularly necessary when it comes to the stealing of dead children’s identities, and the horror and trauma this will cause for their relatives.

Please note: the author is a core participant in the undercover policing inquiry.

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Featured image via Tom Fowler