Met officers running spy unit 'incredibly racist', inquiry hears

Two senior officers who supervised an undercover Scotland Yard unit spying on political campaigns were “horribly and incredibly” racist, a whistleblower has told a public inquiry.

- Rob Evans

Peter Francis, a former member of the unit, testified that one regularly used the “N-word”, while the other used a repertoire of explicit racist slurs.

Francis told the spycops inquiry yesterday he also heard “racist banter” among the undercover officers while he worked for the Metropolitan police unit in the 1990s.

He is the only undercover officer who has blown the whistle on the covert operations of his former unit, the special demonstration squad (SDS), and has over many years detailed its misconduct and inner workings.

The inquiry, led by a retired judge, was set up in 2014 after Francis revealed to the Guardian that the SDS had covertly monitored the campaign run by the family of Stephen Lawrence after he was murdered.