Sir Ian Blair’s Policing Controversy: Making Money With Jean Charles de Menezes
SIR Ian Blair, former Metropolitan Police commissioner, was ever a man keen on celebrity. It was he, after all, who gave London the Celebrity Police Force, the photogenic division for whom no celebrity misdemeanour is too small to attend.
Now Sir Ian has written a book. It’s called Policing Controversy. He got an estimated £150000 to write it in triplicate. Expect to read lots about meetings, meetings about meetings and how while at Christ Church, Oxford, he gained a Second Class Honours Degree in English Language and Literature. He knows his fiction.
Ian Blair’s biography appears on the Metropolitan Police’s website – “Working For A Safer London”.
There is no mention made in it of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot in the head by the Met Police on Sir Ian’s watch, an incident Sir Ian deeply regrets. But, thankfully, Sir Ian now seeks to gives us fuller record of his achievements and tell us that from his position amid the tea cups and biscuits, the cops who killed Menezes deserve a medal:
If, as they thought, the officers were dealing with a suicide bomber, they would have deserved the George Medal. Instead, tragically for the de Menezes family and for them, they live with the killing of an innocent man.
So whose faulty is that, then?
Given what they thought they were dealing with, Charlie 2 and Charlie 12, in running towards and getting within a few feet of a suspected suicide bomber, and Ivor [a surveillance officer], who sprang on him and pinned his arms to his sides on the Tube train, should each have been awarded the George Medal.
Because honours are what it’s all about, eh, Sir Ian:
Instead they live for the rest of their lives with the knowledge that they took part in the killing of an entirely innocent man. Had he been a suicide bomber and they had not shot him and the train had blown up, then, if not dead themselves, they would have faced an investigation for manslaughter.
It’s a terrific argument that serving police may care to adapt for each crime:
“Had the IC3 in the tracksuit been trying to nick the car and not just get home in his own vehicle, we would have solved a crime. And had the boot of said vehicle contained bags of A-class narcotics and a list of drop of points and contacts, I would have solved a massive crime. Which is I arrested him, forced him to strip in the back of van and warned him “less of you lip, sir”.
“The large bearded gentlemen in a headscarf was pointing to his throat. I took this to be a threat to kill and took him to the ground. I then kneeled on his chest. Sadly, he died from choking on a peanut logged in her throat – the would-be killer was later identified as Mrs Fatima O’Shea. Had she been an Al Qaeda operative seeking to kill brave British police and bring fear and carnage to the streets, I would have been hailed as a hero.”
Sir Ian has a book to sell, and goes on to say:
As the coroner implied by refusing to allow the inquest jury to consider a verdict of unlawful killing, their decisions were reasonable decisions on what they themselves knew and perceived. The great difficulty is that this is a case in which it appears that so were the decisions of everybody else.
No, not everybody. The buck must stop somewhere.
Sir Ian’s words can be read in the actual book or in the pages of the Mail on Sunday, which is serialising the thing. But who wants to read about a corporate copper’s career? We want action:
Stockwell officers who shot Jean Charles De Menezes might have had a medal, says Sir Ian Blair
Well, they might have, Your Honours…
Posted: 19th, October 2009 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
