From the Guardian - Jan 19, 2011

by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans

Senior officers say undercover operations need independent regulation as criticism mounts over the Mark Kennedy case

Police chiefs admitted today that their infiltration of undercover police officers into protest groups had gone "badly wrong" and called for independent regulation of spying operations.

Amid mounting criticism of police over the handling of the Mark Kennedy case, Jon Murphy, who speaks on the issue for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), also insisted that undercover officers were forbidden from sleeping with activists to gather information.

Three official inquiries have been launched into Kennedy's seven-year infiltration of the environmental movement after a criminal trial collapsed last week. The row has also led to Acpo being stripped of its power to run undercover police units.

Murphy told the Guardian: "Something has gone badly wrong here. We would not be where we are if it had not."

He said senior police officers would welcome an outside body monitoring their use of undercover police officers. "We are left to regulate it ourselves, and we think we do a good job of it," he said. But he acknowledged: "Sometimes things go wrong. It is a volatile area of police work."

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