Intelligence

Met chief calls for wider policing debate

ePolitix.com - Press Review

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, will tonight call for a debate on the kind of policing the country needs following the terror attacks in July.

Sir Ian will use the annual Dimbleby lecture to say the policing challenge has changed and there needs to be a new forum for discussion to avoid further political controversies, following last week's Commons row over 90-day detention powers.

Speaking to the Guardian ahead of the lecture, Sir Ian said controversial modern police strategies such as armed response, which resulted in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in July, are developing in a "totally private" environment dominated by the police themselves.

"We need to come into a place where we can discuss these issues in reasonable, compassionate debate. They can't go on being private," he said.

In his speech, Sir Ian is also expected to say policing is hampered by the fact that "there is little dispassionate, thought-through public examination of just what it is we are here to do in the 21st century".

And on the role he played in last weeks political debate over 90-day detention for terror suspects, Sir Ian said he had no regrets about arguing for the extra powers.

The Met gave MPs "professional advice", he said. "That is what I did and would do again to any government of any stripe."

Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports that the Brazilian man shot dead by Met police officers who believed him to be a suicide bomber, was killed with a type of bullet banned in warfare under international convention.

The firing of hollow point ammunition into the head of Jean Charles de Menezes is believed to be the first use of the bullets by British police.

November 16, 2005 at 09:25 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home