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UK: Police 'smear' campaign targeted Stephen Lawrence's friends and family: Exclusive: former undercover officer Peter Francis says superiors wanted him to find 'dirt' shortly after 1993 murder

24 June 2013

"A police officer who spent four years living undercover in protest groups has revealed how he participated in an operation to spy on and attempt to "smear" the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, the friend who witnessed his fatal stabbing and campaigners angry at the failure to bring his killers to justice."

Peter Francis, a former undercover police officer turned whistleblower, said his superiors wanted him to find "dirt" that could be used against members of the Lawrence family, in the period shortly after Lawrence's racist murder in April 1993. He also said senior officers deliberately chose to withhold his role spying on the Lawrence campaign from Sir William Macpherson, who headed a public inquiry to examine the police investigation into the death.

Francis said he had come under "huge and constant pressure" from superiors to "hunt for disinformation" that might be used to undermine those arguing for a better investigation into the murder. He posed as an anti-racist activist in the mid-1990s in his search for intelligence."

Full story: Police 'smear' campaign targeted Stephen Lawrence's friends and family (Guardian, link)

And: Doreen Lawrence: 'police resources were used to monitor our campaign': Murdered teenager's mother responds to claims by a former undercover officer that the Met wanted to discredit her family" (Guardian, link)