UNDERCOVER police secretly monitored a community organisation set up to expose wrongdoing in the Metropolitan Police, the spycops public inquiry has heard.

Officers monitored the Hackney Community Defence Association (HCDA) in east London and its key organiser for a decade, formerly secret surveillance reports showed.

They contained personal information about Graham Smith, who founded and ran the HCDA, including his marriage and his father’s terminal cancer.

The HCDA was established to counter police brutality and racism, operating as a self-help group for victims of police violence to obtain justice.

The inquiry heard that undercover officers compiled 44 reports which had details of the activities of the HCDA and Smith between 1988 and 1998. 

The first was filed a month after it was set up in July 1988.

The inquiry is looking at the conduct of undercover police officers who spied on thousands of predominantly left-wing campaigners between 1968 and at least 2010.