Undercover policing
How to Be an Undercover Copper

Earlier this summer, following a number of Freedom of Information requests, London’s Metropolitan Police released the Special Demonstration Squad’s (SDS) “Tradecraft Manual” (PDF), a 60-page document given to undercover police. Those expecting the lid to be lifted fully on the now defunct unit’s controversial activities—at least one of its operatives, Bob Lambert, fathered a child with a woman who had no idea who he really was—might have looked at the pages and pages of blacked out text and concluded that the heavily redacted report has nothing to tell us about the world of undercover policing.