I loved the story on Channel Four news last evening on the spat between Mayor Boris Johnson and former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.
armed police leave scene of de Menezes shooting
Blair took exception to a comment Johnson made during his mayoral campaign where he described the arm police who shot Jean Charles de Menezes as possibly being "trigger happy".In a letter to Johnson Blair asked in the "strongest terms" that he withdraw his comment.In reply Boris said........
"I have absolutely no intention of doing so.It is hard to think of any other description of a catastrophe in which a completely innocent man ends up with seven bullets in his head."
Read Boris Johnson's full letter here.
It's so refreshing to hear such strong langauge used by a prominent public figure to describe the polices' conduct in this tragic incident,'just a shame his most damning words were buried in "private" correspondence,until now.
I was outside Stockwell tube station a short while after the shooting and my observations of the police conduct very quickly had me feeling that all wasn't as it seemed. Police were overly paranoid of media covering the incident endeavoring to stop photographers getting anywhere close to covering events. This didn't seem consistent with a "successful" anti-terror operation to me. Ian Blair claims he didn't know an innocent man had been shot for more than 24 hours. This may be so but I think the police on the ground at Stockwell knew very quickly that they may have made a mistake?
The whole episode is tragic. The biggest injustice I believe is that had de Menezes been a British national someone would indeed have been prosecuted for his killing and Sir Ian Blair would have resigned a whole lot sooner..............for the RIGHT reason.
Making such a plea to a politician makes Blair look naiive.
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