Operation Herne is the Metropolitan Police’s investigation into the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). It was established in the wake of the spycops scandal to look into the allegations being made by SDS whistleblower HN43 Peter Francis about targeting of justice campaigns, relationships being conducted by undercovers, including fathering children, their involvement in criminality and the theft of dead children’s identities to create their cover names. As such, it collated much of the material relating to the SDS held by the Metropolitan Police.
It began in 2011 as an internal investigation by the Metropolitan Police, called Operation Soisson, overseen by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (now the Independent Office for Police Conduct). Operation Soisson was initially headed by DAC Mark Simmonds, the head of the Directorate of Professional Standards, and subsequently by Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan.
However, following criticism after Gallan appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee, in February 2013 Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe appointed Mick Creedon, then Chief Constable of Derbyshire, to head up Herne. Creedon was nominally independent of the Metropolitan Police. However, campaigners did not consider him sufficiently independent as he was someone close to the undercover policing world.
Under Creedon, Operation Herne produced three major public reports into the activities of the Special Demonstration Squad and several smaller ones:
- Covert Identities (July 2013)
- Operation Trinity: Allegations of Peter Francis (March 2014)
- Mentions of Sensitive Campaigns (July 2014)
Other reports it has produced are
- Operation Herne Update (February 2015)
- Operation Riverwood into NPOIU undercover Rod Richardson (2016)
- Operation Reuben into allegations of police collusion in blacklisting (February 2016)
Its credibility was seriously dented when on the release of the third Herne report, Creedon stated:
In that report I make clear that to date we have found no evidence that any SDS officer targeted or infiltrated any family member of any Justice Campaign, nor the Justice Campaign itself, and we can find no trace of any personal information about family members having been recorded by them.
The same day, Mark Ellison released the Stephen Lawrence Independent Review, flatly contradicting him. Soon after, then Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced the establishment of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI).
Once the UCPI was established, Operation Herne changed focus to providing the material it had obtained to the Inquiry, and forewent its investigative role. Within the Metropolitan Police, it is based within the Inquiries and Review Command (previously the Assistant Commissioner - Public Inquiries Team or AC-PIT).
As a result of Operation Herne overseeing the Special Demonstration Squad material, Metropolitan Police officers who served with or were otherwise connected with the SDS are usually given nominals beginning with H, e.g. HN19 'Malcolm Shearing'.
The investigation into the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, corresponding to Operation Herne, is known as Operation Elter. It emerged in 2016 as an offshoot of Herne, funded and overseen by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. This is why NPOIU officers have nominals beginning with E, e.g. EN34 'Lynn Watson'.