Private security industry and the police: revolving door

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Transferable Skills and Alliances: Police and Private Security Industry

Questions have been raised regarding the ethics of "former police officers cashing in on their surveillance skills for a host of companies that target protesters".[1]

Former Special Branch officers

  • One example of Special Branch providing transferable skills is Rod Leeming, a director of Global Open and a former Special Branch officer. Until he left the police in 2001, he admits he regularly infiltrated undercover operatives into protest groups in his role as head of the Animal Rights National index. The animal rights movement subsequently became one of the main focusses of NETCU which polices "domestic extremism".[2] However, he insists Global Open does not infiltrate activist groups. He told The Guardian the company only advises firms on security. However, Global Open appears to have access to well-sourced intelligence.[3]
  • Gordon Irving was a senior officer who worked for Special Branch for 30 years before becoming director of security for Scottish Power in 2001. The energy company has been subject to criticism due to the social and environmental impacts of their projects.[4] Leaked documents exposed Gordon Irving emailing private spying company Vericola, gathering intelligence on the Climate Camp campaigns.[1] This example of proximity between the police and large corporations, formal or informal, may raise doubts about the the possibility of an entirely unbiased police force.

Former Scotland Yard

  • Another company monitoring protesters is the Inkerman Group, which employs former Met commissioner Peter Imbert as a strategic adviser. A "restricted" report produced by the company three years ago warns of a growing threat of "eco-terrorism". Under a section on "recent acts of eco-terrorism", the document lists a number of peaceful campaign groups, including the anti-aviation collective Plane Stupid.[1] Arguably it has been this elusive threat of "eco-terrorism", sometimes tainted with the conflation between "illegal" and "violent" protest, that serves to justify the need for both the domestic extremism units and the private security firms.[5]
  • Peter Bleksley, director and co-owner of a business intelligence company, was a founder member of Scotland Yard's undercover unit in the 1980's.[6] Speaking as a former undercover police officer, when questioned about the Kennedy affair in an an interview for BBC2, confirms that there are currently more police officers embedded in the movement and that "there are also people from the private security sector working against climate campaigners".[7]

A SpinWatch article comments on Bleksley's words that "the language itself is telling. Not ‘protestors’, but ‘campaigners’. Targeted not for taking illegal direct action, but simply for holding a view. And not simply monitoring: the ‘against’ testifies to an agenda in policing".[8]

=Former military officers

  • Russ Corn now works for Diligence, Global Business Intelligence firm, following a career in the UK Special Forces. Diligence was founded in 2000 by an international group of former intelligence officers.[9]

Resources

(resources go here in alphabetical order)

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Paul Lewis and Rob Evans Green groups targeted polluters as corporate agents hid in their ranks The Guardian, 14/02/11, accessed 14/02/11
  2. ↑ LEADING ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST SENTENCED, ACPO press release, 25 February 2005.
  3. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Evans
  4. ↑ Terry Macalister BP joins renewable power campaign group, The Guardian, 27/12/06, accessed 22/02/11
  5. ↑ Matilda Gifford Why spy on peaceful protesters? The Guardian, 26/04/09, accessed 17/01/11
  6. ↑ Contributor's profile Peter Bleksley, The Guardian, accessed 22/02/11
  7. ↑ Kirsty Wark, NewsNight "BBC2" 10/01/11, accessed 11/01/11
  8. ↑ Tilly Gifford Unmasking the environmental infiltrators, SpinWatch, 19/01/11, accessed 22/02/11
  9. ↑ Diligence Website, New Leadership and Expanded Office Will Help Meet Rising Demand for Risk Management Services, 03/01/06, accessed 23/02/11
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