Met police firearms

[Fedster + 1,307]

Activist has launched legal action against CPS decision not to prosecute him.

An ex-undercover police officer under fire over his relationships with three women has hit back, claiming his former Scotland Yard bosses do "a good line in selective amnesia".

Jim Boyling, who worked as part of the Metropolitan Police's controversial Special Demonstrations Squad (SDS), is accused of failing to tell the women he was a police mole.

A private disciplinary hearing is taking place this week over his relationship with a woman known as Rosa, which he claims was genuine and had nothing to do with his deployment.

He said: "The disciplinary charge from the Met specifies that I had a relationship which constituted misconduct because it was 'without a police purpose'. The position of the Met appears to be that a relationship entered into as an operational tactic is acceptable, but a genuine one resulting in marriage and children constitutes misconduct."

On the former officer's account, he and Rosa were a couple from November 1999 to August 2000, when Mr Boyling left the SDS. Rosa tracked him down in November 2001, and they resumed their relationship, having two children and marrying in 2005.

He says he used his real name and registered his occupation as a police officer on the marriage certificate and both birth certificates, that Rosa knew he had worked undercover and had spoken to other officers about it.

"I was astonished to find, when some elements of our story appeared in the press in 2011, that the Met disclaimed all knowledge," he said.

"I had in fact been discussing it fully with them only a few weeks previously and had made a full written declaration of our marriage to the vetting unit within a week of it taking place.

"We were divorced in 2009, which I again notified in writing to the Met. The Met does a good line in selective amnesia, as indeed they do in selective disclosure."

Another of the women, known as Monica, is taking legal action to try to push the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute him for alleged sexual offences and misconduct in a public office.

In 2014 prosecutors decided not to charge officers involved in sexual relationships with partners who did not know their true identity, due to lack of evidence.

Monica, who had a six-month relationship with Mr Boyling in 1997 when she was an activist with Reclaim the Streets, is the first to take legal action to challenge this decision.

She told the Guardian: "What I went through, and other people went through, is wrong. I don't think that my private life and my sexuality should be something that should be spied on, or used to infiltrate organisations that are involved in trying to bring positive change.

"I was lied to, and I was encouraged to be intimate and sexual with somebody who I would never, ever have got involved with if I had known who he was, if I had known his true motives and I had known his true identity."

Monica only discovered that he was an undercover police officer in 2011.

"If I don't challenge [the CPS's decision], then everything just gets brushed under the carpet, and apologies are just empty words ... and nothing really changes," she said.

She said she thinks that for her former partner "fundamentally [the relationship] was just sex, to enhance his cover, and as a perk of the job".

Mr Boyling, who was an officer for 30 years and retired in April 2015, revealed that both his children with Rosa are "severely disabled with limited life expectancy".

He is not contesting the Met disciplinary hearing because he says he cannot afford to stay in London during the proceedings, and does not wish to drag former colleagues and his ex-wife through the process.

The officer, who is now aged in his 50s, will however, give evidence to the public inquiry into undercover policing.

He feels he has been singled out to justify the cost of Operation Herne, a police inquiry into the activities of undercover officers.

"I trust that a more accurate picture of police covert operations may emerge from the Undercover Policing Inquiry, including perhaps the testimony of others who formed genuine relationships during the course of a deployment lasting several years. There are a documented number of such cases which have always previously been sympathetically dealt with.

"It seems to me that my case has been handled differently purely in order to satisfy the Met's current press strategy, and the need for Operation Heme to show some sort of return for the millions of pounds of public money they have spent. If you're going to pick on anybody, the family with the terminally ill children will probably be the weakest."

At least 12 women have received compensation after unwittingly being involved in relationships with undercover officers, and police chiefs have been forced to apologise.

View On Police Oracle

[MerseyLLB 8,426]

I'm a little bit confused that people think covert officers somehow live their assumed identity by day but then each night go back to the police station to be PC BLOGGS and have a normal life.

It's their life to be the new person. It doesn't matter what group you are infiltrating a natural part of life will be relationships, attraction and sex. 

The whole sexual offences line lower down in the article is sensationalism and self pity. Millions of people are lied to in relationships for all number of reasons - that cannot necessarily vitiate consent.

Personally, I don't think it's helpful or particularly ethical to have children or marriage as part of an undercover identity. However relationships and sex will always be a part of it - it will be quite easy to out a covert officer if all you have to do is flirt with them and wait for them to reject advances.

[Mac7 808]

Quote

However relationships and sex will always be a part of it - it will be quite easy to out a covert officer if all you have to do is flirt with them and wait for them to reject advances.

This is my sticking point for UC’s (not covert officers). My gut feeling is that sexual relationships of any kind have no part in policing but there may have been times where it was necessary depending on the deployment objectives and operation as a whole.

Covert and UC tactics may seem wholly unconventional but at the same time absolutely necessary.

[Pavillion 43]

1 hour ago, MerseyLLB said:

The whole sexual offences line lower down in the article is sensationalism and self pity. Millions of people are lied to in relationships for all number of reasons - that cannot necessarily vitiate consent.

I can see the difference between a private individual and somebody masquerading as a private individual, but actually an agent for the state. How is it so you cannot?

[SD + 688]

17 minutes ago, Pavillion said:

I can see the difference between a private individual and somebody masquerading as a private individual, but actually an agent for the state. How is it so you cannot?

Yet again Pavillion your trying to take the intelectual and moral high ground when you’ve no idea about the legislation being discussed. Perhaps if you went away and read the law and caselaw being discussed we would listen to your opinion. As I stands is just guardianista froth and little more.

[ParochialYokal 1,119]

I can understand by today’s standards that they are not acceptable but you can’t turn the clock back and hang these individuals out to dry.

 

I just don’t understand these women. They seem to feel that they were somehow entitled to fulfill disclosure. How long does it take most women to figure out they picked a ‘wrong un’. It’s a better scenario than finding out that the partner was a serious criminal or engaged in domestic violence.

 

How can you can upset about someone you had a sexy time with 20 years ago? It isn’t a form of abuse; it’s a case of a female lacking perspective.

 

 

 

[‘Jacqui’ * 0]

Just a warning to ex spycops taking part in Inquiry. Not all activists who were spied on were harmless.  Andrew Clarke was convicted of making & bombing dept stores for ALF.  He now trolls under a number of twitter accounts. @SackBob2 @Ex_CopShame.  Despite RO & High Court Orders, he is distributing photos of wives & children of cops. He has never worked & in his 50s is stereotypical troll - he uses libraries & other public networks in order to hide behind different accounts.  He is a stalker. BEWARE! The UCPI have been informed.  ‘Jacqui 

[Fedster + 1,307]

An undercover officer who had an unauthorised sexual relationship with an environmental campaigner has been dismissed from the police after a disciplinary hearing.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/03/met-dismisses-police-spy-who-tricked-activist-into-sexual-relationship-jim-boyling

[Mac7 808]

The inclusion of the word “unauthorised” is interesting.

[ParochialYokal 1,119]

It's interesting to see that he did not attend to contest the charge, which was a shame. 

It's all well and good shouting from the sidelines but he could have aired all of that dirty washing at the hearing. 

[a-bothan-spy 81]

It's interesting to see that he did not attend to contest the charge, which was a shame. 
It's all well and good shouting from the sidelines but he could have aired all of that dirty washing at the hearing. 

I believe I read somewhere that he couldn’t financially afford to attend.