Starting in the first half of the 1970s, undercover officers with the Special Demonstration Squad began using identities stolen from children who had died. The belief was that having a birth certiificate would lend credibility to undercovers who came under suspicion from groups they were targeting. The practice soon became standard tradecraft and remained a common, if not required, practice in the SDS until the 1990s when it was abandoned in favour of other forms of creating an identity. It was used by at least two early officers of the NPOIU.
The precise origins of the practice are unknown, but the trip to the births and deaths record archives is sometimes referred to as the ‘Jackal Run’, after the book and film The Day of the Jackal. It was estimated by Operation Herne that the cover identities of around 42 SDS officers were based on those stolen from deceased children.
This backfired in 1976 when SDS undercover HN297 Richard Clark ‘Rick Gibson’ was uncovered and challenged after campaigners identified both the birth and death certificates of the child whose identity he had stolen. However, the tactic did not become public knowledge at that point, so remained in use.
That the police had stolen the identities of dead children finally came to public attention in the 2002 BBC series True Spies, after the practice had mostly been dropped. The revelation generated minimal publicity until 2013, when The Guardian revealed that NPOIU undercover EN32 ‘Rod Richardson’ had used a stolen identity and featured the boy’s real mother, Barbara Shaw. Her formal complaint lead to the Operation Riverwood investigation as part of Operation Herne.
With the spycops scandal growing, the issue was taken up in 2013 by the Home Affairs Select Committee, which questioned Assistant Commissioner Pat Gallan (then overseeing Operation Herne, the Met's self-investigation into spycops) about the tactic.
Gallan’s claim to have only found one instance in six months of investigation, coupled with her refusal to apologise on behalf of the police to the affected families, was considered a key moment leading to the founding of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, as it damaged confidence the police could reliably investigate the issue.
The Home Affairs Select Committee wrote in its critical report:
The practice of "resurrecting" dead children as cover identities for undercover police officers was not only ghoulish and disrespectful, it could potentially have placed bereaved families in real danger of retaliation. The families who have been affected by this deserve an explanation and a full and unambiguous apology from the forces concerned. We would also welcome a clear statement from the Home Secretary that this practice will never be followed in future.
Ignoring the Home Affairs Select Committee's demands, Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe issued a generalised apology for the practice in July 2013, in which he also refused to inform any affected families.
Though not mentioned in the Undercover Policing Inquiry's Terms of Reference, the issue is one of active investigation and hearings in the Inquiry.
| Child | UCO | Deployed |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Scott | HN298 | 1971 |
| Roger Harris | HN200 | 1974 |
| Jeff Slater | HN351 | 1974 |
| Gary Roberts | HN353 | 1974 |
| Rick Gibson | HN297 Richard Clarke | 1974 |
| Desmond Loader | as Barry Loader | 1975 |
| Graham Coates | HN304 | 1975 |
| Vince Miller | HN354 Vincent Harvey | 1976 |
| Colin Clark | HN80 | 1977 |
| Paul Gray | HN126 | 1977 |
| Michael James | HN96 | 1978 |
| Tony Williams | HN20 | 1978 |
| Phil Cooper | HN155 | 1979 |
| Barry Tompkins | HN106 | 1979 |
| Roger Thorley | HN85 Roger Pearce | 1980 |
| John Kerry | HN65 | 1980 |
| Stephen Malcolm Thomas Shearing | HN19 | 1981 |
| Alan Bond | HN67 | 1982 |
| Mike Hartley | HN12 | 1982 |
| Nicholas Peter Green | HN82 | 1982 |
| Kathryn Bonser | HN33 | 1983 |
| Timothy Spence | HN88 | 1983 |
| Mike Blake | HN11 Michael Chitty | 1983 |
| Bob Robinson | HN10 Robert Lambert | 1984 |
| Kevin Douglas | HN25 | 1987 |
| John Barker | HN5 John Dines | 1987 |
| Mark Kerry | HN90 | 1988 |
| Neil Robin Martin | as Neil Martin Richardson | 1989 |
| Anthony Lewis | HN78 Trevor Morris | 1991 |
| Peter Daley or Black | Peter Francis | 1993 |
| Rod Richardson | EN32 (NPOIU) | 1999 |
| Kevin John Crossland | HN16 James Thomson | 2002 |
HN298 was the first known SDS officer to use the death certificate route to create a cover identity. HN16 James Thomson was known as 'James Straven', an identity not based on a deceased child. While he was registered at his cover address under both names, it is not clear if the Crossland identity was sanctioned by management; HN16 never seems to have used it during his deployment.
Of six Tranche 1 undercovers whose real and cover names have been restricted (HN21, HN41, HN109, HN241, HN302, HN341, HN355), the Inquiry has said that 'most' used identities taken from deceased children.