The undercover abuses of British police

In 1985, Bob Lambert, an officer with London’s Metropolitan Police Service, spent the weekend as off-duty officers often do, at home with his wife and two children in the leafy region where he lived. On Sunday evening, he said he had to work and left the house. His family had no idea that Lambert would drive straight to a maternity ward to witness the birth of his son with Charlotte, an animal-rights activist. Charlotte, for her part, was under the impression that Lambert was an activist himself; to her, he was Bob Robinson. Over the next couple of years, he seemed to Charlotte a devoted father. But then he disappeared without a trace. It would take until the child was twenty-six for him to discover that his father was actually Bob Lambert—an undercover officer tasked with infiltrating political groups.

The undercover Special Demonstration Squad, which was part of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, have been accused of a series of abuses of power since its founding in 1968.

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