Category: Policing

With today’s stabbing in Islington which closed Upper Street for the best part of the afternoon we have now got the grim tally of 26 young people killed with knives and guns this year in London, which is precisely one every two weeks. Today’s victim was 16, the average age of all the 26. What a waste? See BBC story here.

Whilst the Mayor and his discredited Commissioner, Ian “Limpet” Blair, try to kid us that everything is rosy in London’s crime garden, and the Mayor’s lead on policing, the sleaze engulfed Lee Jasper, fights to keep his £117K salary young people are being killed at a horrendous rate – one every two weeks. I hope that we can get to the end of the year without another.

The Mayor keeps trying to kid us that he has got crime licked in London, see previous posting. He is dreaming. Jack Large, murderd last night, is the 25th teeneager to be murdered with knives or guns this year, see Evening Standard story.

Today some of the papers are gunning for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, following yesterday’s publication of the IPCC Stockwell One report. The London Mayor has tried to defend Blair by saying that he was only in post for five months at the time of the shooting.

Blair should be hung out to dry but not for the shooting. He needs to go because he specifically ordered the Met to keep the IPCC away from the case.

The IPCC Chairman, Nick Hardwick said yesterday:

The Commissioner attempted to prevent us carrying out an investigation. In my view, much of the avoidable difficulty the Stockwell incident has caused the Metropolitan Police arose from the delay in referral.

Blair showed precisely the wrong instinct. At a time when Londoners needed clarity all we got were mixed messages that gave the impression that the victim was somehow to blame for his own fate. Instead of the Commissioner loudly saying up front that a terrible mistake had happened and that he had called in the IPCC we instead had him writing to the Home Office to get the IPCC off his back.

The Mayor’s press machine went into a frenzy of activity yesterday coming up with three releases on this subject. Compare and contrast what the Mayor says with Hardwick’s statement above:

There is nothing in the IPCC report today that justifies the political witch hunt of David Davis against the police and the Commissioner – a witch hunt which has been condemned in strong terms by the Association of Chief Police Officers, The Metropolitan Police Federation and the national Police Federation.

There is something Mr Mayor. The smoking gun is the IPCC saying that Blair’s getting in their way made for “much avoidable difficulty”.

Telegraph

The Commissioner is a guileful political operator with powerful friends. But in clinging to office he displays neither a sense of honour nor any real concern for policing in the capital, which, under his discredited leadership, will be ill-prepared for the challenges ahead.

Guardian

Almost his first act on the day of the shooting was to write to the home office and explain that he had “decided” that the IPCC would not be allowed to investigate. It emerged that he had no power to decide this and the IPCC work was soon underway. But its chairman, Nick Hardwick, stated yesterday that “much of the avoidable difficulty the Stockwell incident has caused the Metropolitan police arose from the delay in referral”, and he put the blame for this delay squarely on the shoulders of Sir Ian.

Daily Mail

Last week on our front page we called Sir Ian “a man without honour”. Yesterday, he proved it again.

If the Commissioner hasn’t the decency to resign by the time the Metropolitan Police Authority meets next Thursday, they must sack him.

Andrew Gilligan in the Evening Standard last night said:

If the Met had shown itself more willing to admit criticism over Stockwell, it might have found more Londoners willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

The London Assembly made the headline story on the PM programme tonight by voting 15 to 8 on a motion which expressed “lack of confidence in the Commissioner’s stewardship” and urged him to resign.

The Mayor in his campaign to shore up Blair was typically dismissive of the assembly calling them “impotent”, calling the vote “pure posturing” and suggesting that the only people who would applaud the assembly was Al-Qaeda. See BBC coverage here.

In a pugnacious performance this morning the embattled Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, confirmed to the London Assembly that he would not be resigning and that the MPS would not be appealing the guilty verdict in the health and safety trial relating to the Stockwell shooting. He spent an hour and a half batting away questions from assembly members before the vote of no confidence, which is non-binding as it is the Metropolitan Police Authority not the assembly that is ultimately responsible for the Met.

You can see the whole four hour session here. The Met bit starts at about 50:00 minutes in. There is a rambling statement from Len Duvall, past Labour AM and current chairman of the MPA at about 52:55 which finally focuses in on the health and safety trial at 59:20. Blair makes a statement at 1:03:27 and answers questions from about 1:14:00 until 2:41:40. The session resumes at 2:52:20 with the political debate and voting.

Today Keith Dovkants in the Evening Standard did a two-page spread exposing how Sir Ian Blair is more interested in feathering his own nest and pursuing political objectives than in addressing Londoners’ priorities.

The Mayor immediately put out a press release supporting Blair and pointing out that crime had fallen 6.3% last year.

I guess I have to be one of those politicians described by the Mayor as: “skulking around in plots and conspiracies against the Police Commissioner, and by extension the Met as a whole, whilst crime in London is falling and police numbers are at record levels.”

Is policing better? Not if you look at in-your-face crimes involving violence. Violence against the person accounted for 156,880 crimes before the Mayor, up 16% to 182,355 last year. Sexual offences were at 9,189 crimes before the Mayor, peaked at 10,864 in 2004/5 and were still slightly up at 9,305 last year. Robbery is up 26%. 36,317 before the Mayor and 45,771 last year.

Whilst the Mayor and Ian Blair both claim credit for implementing Safer Neighbourhood Teams speedily they are not designed to tackle violent crime which is way too high in London. The SNTs are great but they merely represent a bolt-on to a Met police force that is unreformed and unable to bear down on violent crime. The SNTs are a poor bargain if we are paying a precept that is three times bigger under the Mayor but violent crime is still out of control and rising.