A woman who pretends to be a man and has sex with another woman is jailed for eight years (Report,13 November). At least seven policemen pretend not to be policemen and have sex over a period of time with a number of women, in some cases having children as a result, or are not prosecuted,and in some cases are able to continue to finish their jobs (Met apologises to women deceived by police spies, 21 November). It’s as tough to understand what will be gained from a prison sentence in the first case as it is to see how our police forces could have acted so irresponsibly in the second, and leading to potentially devastating consequences for the victims,immense cost for the force, but seemingly scant consequence either for the perpetrators or for those who must have known about it.
Antony Scott
Yatton, and Somerset• While a powerful deal of attention has,fairly rightly, been paid to the appalling way in which women were used and betrayed by undercover police, and nobody seems to care about the fact that these activists should never have been spied upon in the first place; environmental activism is legal.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com