Two years and four months ago, a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician named Jean Charles de Menezes was brutally shot to death on a Tube train in Stockwell, South London. The deceased had been mistaken for a suicide bomber – the shooting having occurred in the wake of the July 2005 kamikaze attacks on the capital’s transport network – and it wasn’t until after they’d pumped seven bullets into his skull that the gunmen, two members of the Metropolitan Police Service, realised they’d killed an innocent man.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident, several insidious allegations were levelled at poor Jean Charles. He was said to have resisted arrest, leapfrogging over the ticket barriers at Stockwell Tube Station and running away from the pursuing officers, while his clothing was deemed to be inappropriate for the warm summer’s day and, therefore, potentially bomb-concealing in nature. We now know that all of these claims were demonstrably and inarguably false, of course, but at the time we had no way of knowing better and they certainly sounded plausible given the events of the preceding fortnight.

The fact that these allegations were made at all is interesting enough; that they were spread so quickly, and were endorsed by the most senior members of the capital’s police force, is little short of fascinating.

Obviously, the falsehoods had to have come from somewhere. The question is, from whence did they appear? Two broad possibilities spring immediately to mind: either Sir Ian Blair, the Met’s Chief Commissioner, deliberately misled the press and the public or, as he claims, he repeated the above-cited untruths in good faith. If the former applies, a whole series of Blair’s subsequent remarks are promptly thrown into severe doubt, most notably the assertion that he was unaware of his colleagues’ grievous error until almost 24 hours after the shooting had taken place. After all, why else would he lie about the deceased’s behaviour, demeanour and appearance if it wasn’t to conceal the true circumstances of Jean Charles’s death? Even more importantly, why would he tell lies which were so easy to disprove unless he was desperately stalling for time? Thanks to the CCTV footage from the Tube station, and the gruesome photographs of de Menezes’s body as it lay on the blood-soaked floor of the carriage, the myths perpetuated by the Met would soon be destroyed and accusations of a botched cover-up were sure to follow.

Furthermore, even if we give Sir Ian the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was indeed telling the truth as he then understood it to be, the questions do not go away. Far from it. After all, as I’ve already noted, the aforementioned accusations had to come from somewhere. If the Commissioner genuinely believed them to be true, someone on his staff had evidently misled him in a very pernicious way.

To recap the situation in brief: either Sir Ian Blair knowingly lied to the media and the British public, or else his subordinates intentionally misled him for up to 24 hours after the accident. There’s simply no way around it. The ONLY possible alternative comes in the form of sheer, unadulterated, mind-boggling, New Labour-rivalling incompetence on the part of the Commissioner and his subordinates, relying upon a tangled web of half-truths, misunderstandings and latent distortions in order to brief the press following what was, effectively, a game of intra-Met Chinese Whispers. Whichever option applies in reality, the outcome ought to have involved Blair’s prompt resignation from his post. Even if he could prove that the substance of the misleading statements came from someone else, it would hardly serve to engender public confidence in a police chief who can’t even command honesty and respect from his own staff.

Blair has thus far displayed all the tenacity shown by his namesake, ex-PM Tony, in clinging to his job in spite of the continued criticism levelled his way as a result of the Brazilian’s slaying. (It seems as though an inability to do the honourable thing is not exclusively a New Labour trait after all.) However, last week saw the long-overdue publication of the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s report into the shooting, and its damning tone surely ought to sound the death-knell for Sir Ian’s tenure at the top.

Given the moniker ‘Stockwell 1’, the report arrived hot on the heels of the ‘Guilty’ verdict which was handed down by an Old Bailey jury against the Metropolitan Police; the legal proceedings in question stemmed not from anything as grandiose (and appropriate) as murder or manslaughter charges, but from an alleged contravention of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Remarkably, this trial – branded “unbelievable” and “ridiculous” by Jean Charles’s relatives – represented the family’s best chance of obtaining justice for their loved one, the Crown Prosecution Service having decided in July 2006 that it would not seek to prosecute the shooters personally for their mistake. Nevertheless, the verdict represented a severe embarrassment for both Sir Ian and the Met as a whole. Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs promptly called for the Commissioner’s resignation, but New Labour immediately decried any such suggestion and gave fulsome support to the harried officer. Ken Livingstone was particularly obsequious, refusing to countenance the idea that Blair ought to go even while matters went from bad to worse from the latter’s perspective.

Blair’s dogged refusal to accept his fate won him no friends in the press, with several newspapers attacking his arrogance and demanding that he rethink his position. Naturally, he turned a blind eye to these furious op-ed pieces and smugly reiterated his intention to stay put.

No fewer than 16 recommendations were made by the IPCC at the end of ‘Stockwell 1’, based upon the actual events of July 22 and the actions of the police on the day in question. That’s quite a lot, isn’t it? Sixteen discrete areas in which the process could have been improved? Bear in mind that Jean Charles left his London flat shortly after 9.30am on the 22nd and was killed shortly after 10am. Sixteen snafus in little over half an hour amounts to approximately one gaffe every two minutes! Even John Prescott would baulk at making so many errors in such swift succession, for Pete’s sake. As Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, the proverbial buck ought to have stopped at Sir Ian’s door… but it was not to be.

A second IPCC report, this time entitled ‘Stockwell 2’ and focusing more-or-less exclusively upon Sir Ian’s conduct, had already inflicted a public censure upon the Met when it was released in August 2007. Although Blair himself largely escaped scot-free, the bulk of the blame for his erroneous post-shooting pronouncements being placed atop the shoulders of his deputy, Andy Hayman, the report did highlight “serious weaknesses” in the procedures followed that day and further calls were immediately made for the leader’s head to roll. Red Ken once again hurled himself into the fray on Sir Ian’s side, attempting to defend the indefensible as usual, and the disgraced policeman was allowed to retain his post once more.

Adding insult to injury was a motion of no confidence which was brought against the Commissioner by the London Assembly on November 7 and which passed by 15 votes to eight. Did Blair finally accept that he had lost the support of his own people, the general public and the bulk of the nation’s politicians? Did he take the only way out and leave his post with one tiny scrap of dignity intact? You already know the answer, but just in case: no, of course he didn’t.

Let us not forget that, even after the true facts of the shooting had come to light, Sir Ian’s Stockwell-related misbehaviour was by no means over. It was soon revealed that he had attempted to block the IPCC’s inquiry, having sent a letter to Sir John Gieve, the Home Office Permanent Secretary, written within hour of the shooting on July 22. In the epistle, Blair stated his belief that “a chief officer of police should be able to suspend Section 17 of the Police Reform Act 2002, which requires us to supply all information that the Independent Police Complaints Commission may require.” He went on to assert that he had “given instructions” to the effect that “the shooting is not to be referred to the IPCC and that they will be given no access to the scene at the present time.”

That’s right: even while poor Jean Charles’s body was still warm, Blair was attempting to weasel his way out of a full-bore independent investigation. (Does this sound familiar? Ian and Tony share more than just a surname, it seems.)

The missive was copied to Nick Hardwick, Chairman of the IPCC, and when it was finally made public – following an application under the Freedom of Information Act – the nation was shocked. If the Met truly had nothing to hide, why did it seem to fear the IPCC so much? Something was decidedly fishy about Sir Ian’s attempted intervention; we wouldn’t have to wait long to find out what, as the subsequent IPCC revelations (and, of course, the ensuing court case) showed us all just why the Commissioner was so desperate to cover up his team’s abject failures.

Nor does the impetus for Sir Ian’s hoped-for resignation stem solely from the de Menezes affair. Let’s cast our minds back to some of the other transgressions, blunders and good old-fashioned cock-ups overseen by the Commissioner, all of which contribute towards my desire to see him leave his cushy and well-paid job in disgrace.

Take the June 2006 raid on a property in Forest Gate, London, for instance: another innocent man was shot, albeit not in a fatal way, and over £2m was invested in the operation. When the dust had settled, no charges were brought against its targets. All the Met had succeeded in doing was harming their reputation still further, wasting a large amount of public money and, perhaps most damagingly of all, ostracising the already-terrified Muslim community to a hitherto-unforeseen extent. Nevertheless, Sir Ian kept his job and stayed on with the full backing of New Labour.

How about the cowardly 78-man assault upon poor Brian Haw’s campsite, which took place in May 2006 and decimated the plucky protester’s collection of anti-war placards? Not only was this a disgraceful abuse of the Met’s authority, spuriously justified under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, but it spawned another ill-disguised untruth from Sir Ian for which he remained unpunished. Soon after the event, he was forced to make a humiliating apology to members of the Metropolitan Police Authority when it became evident that he’d misled them as to the cost of the operation against Haw, indicating that the bill had been in the region of £7,000 when, in reality, it ran to £27,000. That’s a pretty sizeable discrepancy, but Sir Ian remained in situ despite his colleagues’ warnings that he was rapidly alienating those who had stood by him for so long.

The list of Blair Sr.’s wrongdoings goes on, of course – who could forget the March 2006 revelation that he had recorded telephone conversations, including those with the Attorney General, in clandestine fashion, a move branded “totally unacceptable” by the chairman of the MPA? – but there’s little or no merit in producing a comprehensive list of his misdemeanours here. The basic point is amazingly simple. For any one of the above-enumerated errors, particularly the death of Jean Charles de Menezes and the subsequent attempt at a cover-up, he ought to have stepped down; due to the cumulative effect thereof, however, his position is nothing less than 100% untenable. Sir Ian must now resign his post and hand the reins to another Commissioner, one who will hopefully prove to be less duplicitous and more competent, as soon as possible.

Come back, Lord Stevens. All is forgiven.

 

ADDENDUM: The ‘Stockwell 1’ report, totalling some 170 pages, can be downloaded from the IPCC’s official website (as, indeed, can its twin, ‘Stockwell 2’).

 

PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY, AND REPRODUCED COURTESY OF, THE JEAN CHARLES DE MENEZES FAMILY CAMPAIGN.