Undercover police officers can start sexual relationships with suspected criminals if it means they are more plausible, Home Office Minister Nick Herbert said, according to The Daily Telegraph. There had previously been confusion about whether undercover police were allowed to go that far following the collapse of a case against environmental activists after it emerged the group was infiltrated by an officer called Mark Kennedy, who had been in sexual relationships with two women in the campaign. Kennedy spent seven years posing as long-haired dropout climber Mark “Flash” Stone to infiltrate activists and admitted having sex with at least two women during the operation. Herbert said it was important police were allowed to have sex with activists because otherwise it could be used as a way of outing potential undercover officers. A report on Kennedy said ‘he seemed to believe he was best placed to make decisions about how the operation should progress’. Kennedy worked undercover in 11 countries on 40 occasions, mostly on “European-wide protest issues”, but there was no single officer in control and the authorising officer was not even always told Kennedy was going overseas, nor given relevant information about what happened while he was there.
