Sir Ian Blair may be high profile but he’s just another boy in blue, says robert chesshyre
One major irony to have emerged from the current "war on terror" is that events of the past five months (since the July 7 suicide bomb attacks on London's transport system) have damaged the standing of the police to an extent few would have believed possible. No one blamed the police for their failure to detect and arrest the bombers before they could commit their deadly deeds, but many must now be questioning their competence in the subsequent pursuit of terrorists.
The latest blow to police self-esteem is the decision yesterday by the Independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate the conduct of Britain's top cop, Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting (also in July) of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes on a London tube train.
No profession is as blinkered as the boys in blue. When the full facts become known, certainty evaporates like morning mist
Blair made categorical statements - including that the shooting had been "directly linked" to the anti-terrorist operation arising from failed suicide bombings - that later proved very wide of the mark. As a long-time police watcher, I felt then that he was following the familiar police tactic of rushing in with a pre-emptive strike to put their gloss on events. It is done all the time.
No profession is as blinkered as the boys in blue. When the full facts become known, I have seen police certainty evaporate like morning mist. There is an explanation - the police are a tribe apart. They live their lives cheek-by-jowl with one another, whether in police cars or back at the station, absorbing the notorious canteen culture. This creates a kind of collective folly. What one cop believes, soon all believe - and it goes right to the top.
This is not to prejudge the IPCC inquiry; he may well (indeed probably will) be exonerated. But if he does survive, he might consider that - for a commissioner - shooting from the lip can be almost as dangerous as shooting from the hip.
