Sussex Police

Sussex Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing the county of Sussex in southern England (consisting of East Sussex, West Sussex and the city of Brighton and Hove). Its headquarters is located in Malling House, Lewes, East Sussex.

South East Counter Terrorism Unit (SECTU)

Sussex police is a member force of the South East Counter Terrorism Unit (SECTU), alongside Surrey and Kent Police.

Deeming oil and gas protestors as potential domestic extremists

Sussex Police was one of the first forces to associate protest against oil and gas as a public threat when it identified Celtique Energy’s Broadford Bridge exploratory drilling operation ‘as a site for potential “domestic extremism”’ in early 2013 according to council documents published by Netpol.

Then in 2014, a badly redacted FOI disclosure site exposed how the Sussex force had spied on anti-fracking protestors at Cuadrilla’s controversial Balcombe site the previous summer. As DrillorDrop noted at the time:

‘The redacted section from the findings dealt with intelligence and specifically stated that the operation used covert intelligence-gathering. “Once the operation moved into August”, the report said, “it was apparent that an appropriate range of intelligence sources were being harnessed, including where appropriate ECHR [European Court of Human Rights] compliant covert means.”’

Counter-Terrorism Local Profiles