'Nineteen catastrophic failings that led to the death of an innocent man' summed up the judge as he found the Metropolitan Police Force guilty of putting the public at risk that day at Stockwell Tube Station.
"I intend to continue in my post" said the head of the Met minutes after the damning verdict on the force he leads.
What the trial into the the shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes shows is that nobody is going to be held accountable for a catalogue of fatal mistakes and sheer incompetence inside our Metropolitan Police Force.
Police Commissioner, Ian Blair, not only oversaw the shooting of an innocent man but he attempted to cover it up afterwards.
After the shooting, he telephoned the Chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and wrote a letter to the Home Office stating that "the shooting that has just occurred at Stockwell is not to be referred to the IPCC and that they will be given no access to the scene at the present time". In the UK police shootings are routinely investigated by the IPCC. He also made a false statement claiming that a warning had been issued prior to the shooting.
The trial also contained a smear campaign against the victim where he was painted as a drug user and cast doubts about his legality to be in the country.
Ian Blair's defence that it was an 'isolated tragedy' would sound more believable if a year later under his watch, another innocent man was not shot during a bungled raid on 'suspected terrorists' in Forest Gate.
The wrong man was killed by the ineptitude of our police force and someone has to be held accountable to restore public confidence and to show that lessons have been learnt and if the situation ever surfaced again, our police would be more competent in dealing with it.
The buck has to stop with someone and as the head of the police force responsible, Ian Blair should think himself lucky that he is being called upon to resign and not just sacked.
5 comments:
He could always get a job in Chicago.
Isn't it fairly recently that your coppers got guns, Lucy? Tip of the iceberg, this.
This was a Special Operations unit o'tim, the general 'ello, 'ello, 'ello type copper isn't armed yet.
It was a typical result wasn't it? Maximum guilt with minimum accountability.
A bit like that report into Tony Blair's porky pies before the illegal invasion of Iraq - turns out that the dossier was full of lies. But those misleading words must have typed themselves because they never did manage to find anyone who actually created it. Quelle surprise.
And we're still waiting for justice for Harry Stanley too. He was the guy shot while leaving a pub carrying a coffee table leg, which police mistook for a sawn-off shotgun.
There is an IPCC report out next week into the shooting and after Ian Blair tried to stop any investigation into the shooting, it is bound to be critical of him. Rather than a death by a thousand cuts, he should be decapitated for his incompetence. (Decapitated metaphorically speaking of course, although if he organised it he would probably miss anyway)
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