Policing Controversy

by Ian Blair

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is often described as the toughest job in the world. He (there has never been a woman in 140 years) is answerable to three bosses, the Mayor of London, the Home Secretary and the Metropolitan Police Authority, and he has a GBP3 billion budget to spend, ensuring that he is always at the centre of a political storm, and never out of the news. But more than that, he has to battle with traffic deaths and burglary, knife crime, gun crime, and the really big stuff, like terrorism - wherever it happens in the UK. Ian Blair had been top cop for just four months when the tube and bus bombs of 7 July 2005 hit London in the worst terrorist atrocity in British history. And when 4 suicide bombers tried to kill hundreds more people on 21 July, it was on his beat. So it was the next day when, infamously, the unarmed and innocent Jean de Menezes was shot at Stockwell. Here for the first time is the fly-on-the-wall story of an impossible job; of the background and history of the police and their difficult relationship with us, the public; of the de Menezes case; of fighting terrorism - everywhere in Britain, in cases that never reach the media; of the battle with politicians, and of Blair's forced resignation by Boris Johnson.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published November 25, 2009

About the author

Ian Warwick Blair, Baron Blair of Boughton as a British police officer who held the position of Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 2005 to 2008.
Blair joined the Metropolitan Police in 1974 under a graduate scheme, and served 10 years in London. As deputy chief constable of Thames Valley Police, he handled the protests over the construction of the Newbury bypass, and then became chief constable of Surrey Police, before being appointed deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and then commissioner in January 2005. His term of office saw the mistaken shooting of an innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, which resulted in contradictory police reports, and his comments on race caused some controversy among ethnic-minority police officers.
In October 2008 he announced that he would step down from the post in December after disagreements with Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. Blair was appointed a crossbench life peer in July 2010.

Reviews

[Own Timis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look into perhaps one of the less controversial Commissioners of modern times. Sir Ian didn't come across as particularly likeable but you had to feel some sympathy for him being thrown under the bus by Boris.