In a bid to increase crime detection rates, police in the UK are to divert resources used to spy on victim’s families to using undercover officers and detectives to catch criminals.
With the damning evidence released from the Macpherson report that suggested the Met had launched a military style surveillance on the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, and now claims the same happened to the mother of student Ricky Reel, police have admitted that to date, this policy has failed to find the killers.
“After much public criticism we can now see that spying in a dead boy’s mother may not be the most productive use of resources,” a spokesperson for Scotland Yard said.
“It turns out that when a young man is murdered in a racially motivated attack, it is highly unlikely it was his parents that did it. Especially when we know they were miles away and it would be impossible for them to do it.
“But we could only come to that conclusion by having dozens of officers follow them, going through their bins and treating them like criminals.”
Although the Met has now decided to use their finite resources to try and find the murderers instead of the spying on victims’ families, the latest revelations are bound to reignite claims the police service is institutionally racist, a claim the spokesperson denies.
“We didn’t spy on these families because the crimes were racially motivated, we would have spied on any black family.”
