Sir Ian Blair will continue to lead the Metropolitan Police, despite mounting pressure to resign, following the death of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes.
The Met was fined £175,000 and ordered to pay £385,000 after it was found guilty of breaching health and safety laws by an Old Bailey jury.
De Menezes was shot seven times in the head at a London Underground train station in July 2005 after being wrongly identified as a suspected terrorist.
Prosecutors had argued that De Menezes and members of the public were put at risk because he was allowed on two buses and an underground train while under police observation before being shot dead.
But commissioner Blair told reporters outside the Old Bailey court that he would stay in his job and insisted the shooting took place in extraordinary circumstances, adding that there was “no evidence at all of systematic failure” by his force.
Members from rival parties the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats called for his resignation. Shadow home secretary David Davis said the commissioner’s position was now “untenable”.
However, the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) and the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) are behind Blair.
Len Duvall, chair of the MPA, said: “The MPA fully supports the commissioner and will continue to work with him, his management team and all MPS staff to achieve high-quality policing so that everyone in London can gain and retain confidence in the Met.”
Ken Jones, Acpo president, said: “Acpo supports the commissioner Sir Ian Blair. The MPS are on the front line in the UK, regularly confronting complex and ambiguous lethal threats to our safety. The overwhelming majority of police operations are concluded safely and successfully. Tragically on this occasion that was not the case.”
Comments are closed.