Did the CPS unlawfully authorise undercover work?

Regulation Of Investigatory Powers is enabling framework legislation that creates a way for local councils to stalk people for attempting to get into the wrong school or for police officers to be given recklessness as a side line. Ignoring the claim (frequent) that it is NOT anti-terrorist legislation, RIPA enables hiding of evidence, questionable activities and anything else that the Home Secretary sees as being appropriate. Repealing RIPA would do it a favour to everyone except the corrupt.

Isn't that the argument used by a lot of activists?

I hate the cops as must as the next person, but I imagine they could use a similar argument for themselves.

RIPA, as far as I recall, is mostly concerned with setting regulations around surveillance, that the authorities have to observe. There's nothing in there that gives anyone the legal right to commit crimes of conspiracy or incitement, or anything else for that matter.

I'm not convinced that the "commit a crime to prevent a greater crime" is an established principle that they could rely on either. I'm aware that activists have used that as a defence successfully, but if it was a jury that acquitted them then it could be considered a perverse verdict that hasn't set a precedent. Just because I know someone's planning to go and attack someone, or set their dog on them, wouldn't make it legal for me to break their legs or steal their dog to prevent this happening. OK, rubbish example, sorry, but you get the point.

Whilst technically it could be called assault, the law allows for the use of force in self-defence or to defend others (and in some circumstances, to stop a crime in progress or prevent the suspect escaping). Nonetheless, you could still be prosecuted for carrying an offensive weapon or unlicensed possession of a firearm, if you used those to stop yourself or someone else being assaulted and it was necessary to use them, even though the actual force you used was reasonable and thus legal and protected you from prosecution for the rest of your actions. So even self-defence is quite specific.

Anyway, I hope the activists concerned and their lawyers look into this.

"If they are not involved in the planning, or did not instigate or initiate an offence, if their role is of a peripheral nature, they can be granted participating status."

So Mark Kennedy's role in the aborted Ratcliffe action and many others means he DIDN'T have what they call "participating status". So what would they call it then? "Instigating status"? "Planning status"? "Logistical status"?

As a comment I noticed on yesterday's Grauniad piece said:

"400 litres of your finest emergency white-wash if you will my good man and make it sharpish."

The plod could only claim that their committing of a crime was legal if that crime was considerably lesser than the crime they strove to prevent.

However, if the crime they were prosecuting was the same crime it gets harder to defend.

If the crime being prosecuted was actually instigated/planned/enabled by the cops, they have acted clearly in a criminal manner. It is generally what is called entrapment.

My pet theory is that the reason the scuppered the trial is that they feared a setting events into motion that would uncover evidence that the plod have been entrapping peaceful activists.

The motives for such sinister and illegal behaviour are many. Here are a few:

1. The state really does recognise that popular resistance to its unsustainable, immoral and undemocratic behaviour is a threat to the ruling elite and their paymasters.

2.That getting loads of people nicked and into the criminal justice system satisfies many undemocratic objectives, including disabling movements and criminalising peaceful protest to choke the uptake of new recruits.

3. "The tail wagging the dog." That they are cynically drumming up new business for themselves by exaggerating the actual danger to the public of activists in order protect their budgets, expand departments and syphon more public funds into the private sector (such as Global Open/NPOIU).

At any rate, RIPA200 is a scary piece of oppressive legislation, but it is all about surveillance and intercepts and nothing about giving cops and their cronies the license to break laws in the way the seem to have been doing.

Again, I think the real bigger story that made them drop Ratcliffe like a hot potato is that what they want to hide if much more serious- as disgusting as the infiltrators have been.

"The plod could only claim that their committing of a crime was legal if that crime was considerably lesser than the crime they strove to prevent."

I'm not so sure that stands up to scrutiny though. If an undercover cop infiltrates a drug ring, I can't see how they'd avoid maintaining their cover without getting involved enough that they could be considered to have committed conspiracy to supply drugs/possession of drugs which would probably be the same offence that the suspects would be charged with.

At the end of the day, unless there's a statute or case law has established in common law that it's legal for the police to commit a lesser crime (or even the same crime) to prevent a crime, then surely it's illegal. The CPS might have reached an understanding with the police that they won't prosecute the officers involved because it's "not in the public interest", but the CPS don't make the law and if this is the only basis for this practice, I'd suggest the CPS are acting unlawfully, and their actions are vulnerable to judicial review.

I forget the Latin terminology, but the principal of breaking a law to prevent a worse crime/event taking place is nothing obscure. It happens all the time.

In the example of speeding, drivers aren't breaking the law if there is good reason:

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8350539.stm

I wasn't even charged when I kicked a door in to get to an infant that had been locked inside while its mother went out drinking.

If you were to kill someone who was imminently about to murder someone else it would normally be legal.

If the cops can argue that their actions were preventing a higher crime, like everyone else, it is legal.

I'm not saying that they did act in that manner, just that is likely their excuse.

In reality they probably run riot while most people in the system look the other way.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_in_English_law

Not endorsing this article at all, but someone has already been thinking on these lines:

 http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2011/01/10/did-undercover-climate-officer-go-native/

"In the example of speeding, drivers aren't breaking the law if there is good reason:

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8350539.stm"

Well that states that statute permits the emergency services to speed in the course of duty and that case law has established there can be defences to a charge of speeding for everyone else, and thus if there appeared to be such a defence, it would be appropriate for the police to take no further action.

"I wasn't even charged when I kicked a door in to get to an infant that had been locked inside while its mother went out drinking."

Obviously I don't know the details, but that could be covered by the defence of necessity that you refer to. To quote from the wiki you linked to "the defence of necessity recognises that there may be situations of such overwhelming urgency that a person must be allowed to respond by breaking the law." and "There must be an urgent and immediate threat to life which creates a situation in which the defendant reasonably believes that a proportionate response to that threat is to break the law." Even if the defence of necessity didn't apply, the police or CPS may have decided that it wasn't "in the public interest" to prosecute you. That doesn't establish that what you did was legal, or mean they couldn't prosecute someone else in the exact same circumstances.

"If you were to kill someone who was imminently about to murder someone else it would normally be legal."

That's only true if the force used was reasonable and necessary. If it was determined that you could have reasonably prevented the murder without killing the person, you'd probably face a manslaughter charge. In any event, that's clearly covered by the defence of necessity.

"If the cops can argue that their actions were preventing a higher crime, like everyone else, it is legal."

I disagree. All you've shown is that the defence of necessity can apply when there is "an urgent and immediate threat to life"

My point is, just because the police choose not to arrest, or the CPS choose not to prosecute, doesn't establish that what was done was lawful, so unless there's some case law or statute that allows for the police to commit crime in the course of their undercover work, then all we have is a conspiracy by the authorities to usurp the rule of law.

You can make it up as you go along all you like, but the necessity defence stretches beyond 'life and limb'. It can have a wide range of contexts. It could be argued that if the arrests were made earlier that some mythical catastrophe would not have been averted- when anyone with an ounce of sense can see through the lie; but credibility to the public isn't the issue. It's just an exercise in providing an escape route.

You also seem to think I am myself making a case for the police. I'm not. I think they have most probably acted illegally and have been in the murky waters of entrapment and they are running a damage limitation exercise now.

I am assuming that people will now be looking at any convictions that may have been arising from police entrapment and seeking proper legal advice.

The main problem is that there is little in the way of specific legislation regulating undercover police operations, and obviously the public oversight is so lacking that they have been running roughshod and riot.

Just don't expect them not to try avoiding be held accountable for their actions.

Why would you suggest I'm making it up as I go along, and that the "necessity defence stretches beyond 'life and limb'" when I've quoted from the wiki you linked to that says "There must be an urgent and immediate threat to life", not "some mythical catastrophe" sometime in the future? I realise wikipedia isn't always accurate, but I haven't seen anything else that contradicts that either.

You're probably right that there's issues of entrapment and people might be able to get convictions overturned on this basis, but I also think there's an important question as to the legality of police officers committing crime, even if they have been authorised to do so by their superiors, and the CPS giving them immunity to do so.

Of course I expect them to try to avoid being held to account. That's why I'm trying to find ways that we can challenge their actions.