Resignation & Responsibility

[Sput]

You've failed comprehensively to explain why he's responsible. I'd have thought it's quite hard to be responsible for something that was kept from you and didn't involve you in any way.

That response makes a mockery of your earlier statement.

Nice try, but no. The first post is "what if he resigned?" and the second one is "should he resign?"

A token resignation just makes the organisation lose its chief when what it needs is good leadership.

If he knew nothing about the incident and he wasn't involved in anyway then he has failed to provide effective leadership.

The "it wasn't me, it was him!" attitude doesn't work when you are the head of the organisation.

It's a very tenuous link (if it exists at all) that no-one but you seems to have made that the death of the guy was Blair's fault.

So remind me again why every single departmental head above the people directly involved shouldn't resign? It's not his job to oversee conduct in any practical sense, it wasn't his decision to shoot and it wasn't his job to train the officers involved.

We can look at this from another angle: if Blair resigned, the people who are actually responsible for the circumstances will feel they've gotten away with it. It could do more harm than him staying on!

As I said, I think, before, everyone has a different idea of responsibility and base their ideas of who should resign on that...

[Adders]

Just to add my opinion to this subject...

I don't think that Sir Ian Blair should resign over the shooting of Jean Charles but only due to the circumstances at the time. These circumstances were possibly the most extreme the country has ever seen, and so the police will have reacted heavy-handedly if they suspected anyone of being a terrorist. Although when we see the pictures today, Jean Charles does not look very similar to the actual perpetrator, Hussain Osman, in the heat of the moment, the surveillance officer could have quite easily mistaken Jean Charles for Osman. The shooting was a mistake on the part of some members of the MET police, but not necessarily Sir Ian. I think everybody would be pissed off if a member of their family was shot dead after being mistaken for a terrorist. However, if Jean Charles had been a terrorist, and the MET police didn't shoot, there would be just as many - if not more - calls for Sir Ian to resign. So the MET Police officers involved in the incident will have had to make a very difficult decision. I know that everybody should be 'innocent until proven guilty', but if your life, and the lives of dozens of other people in the immediate area are potentially at risk, the chances are that you would shoot.

The main problem I have with the Jean Charles case is the lies immediately after the shooting. Needless to say, the false information should not have been made public. However, Sir Ian was only making the statement using the information provided to him by the members of his police force. So instead of Sir Ian being used as a scapegoat, the members of the MET Police who gave the false information to Sir Ian should resign instead.

If you were in the same situation as many of the MET police officers on the day in question, how would you react?

[Stuart*]

It's not his job to oversee conduct in any practical sense, it wasn't his decision to shoot and it wasn't his job to train the officers involved.

Indeed not, and I would wouldn't expect to see the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis running through the streets catching muggers or shooting terrorists. Nor would I expect him/her to be present at every terrorist incident.

What I would expect though is that they put in place procedures and personnel to ensure that training was carried out effectively to protect citizens rather than shoot them. If they fail to do so then they have failed in their basic responsibility and should be accountable.

We can look at this from another angle: if Blair resigned, the people who are actually responsible for the circumstances will feel they've gotten away with it. It could do more harm than him staying on!

Yes but they have got away with murder already, literally; and his continued presence as the leader of that organisation endorses the view that the police can act outside the very laws they claim to enforce.

A shroud of unaccountability has decended over the whole incident, obviously responsibility from the top is to suffer a similar fate.

[Sput]

Ah, but what if the mechanisms were there to the best of his knowledge, but they weren't followed and this was an isolated incident? That's nothing systematic.

[Stuart*]

Ah, but what if the mechanisms were there to the best of his knowledge, but they weren't followed and this was an isolated incident? That's nothing systematic.

If his procedures and policies weren't followed then there is a clear case for the dismissal of every officer in that chain of command for gross misconduct. That hasn't happened.

This is not an isolated incident, this has happened before; although thankfully not very often.

No matter how rare, or under whatever circumstances of increased threat, it is not legitimate to shoot and kill an innocent unarmed citizen. No amount of excuses can make up for the fact that someone died unnecessarily in the name of protecting a system of justice which doesn't seem to extend to the enforcers themselves.

Perhaps Sir Ian Blair should not be the only one to go, and when they do they should think themselves lucky to escape the wrath of the judiciary.

[Sput]

And if those procedures weren't his, were followed and failed? Let's not forget he'd only been in the job 5 months.

[Gavin Scott]

On balance I tend to agree with Andy that resignation/sacking would be a token act of contrition. In many ways that is what the public at large would like to see, but it may leave the Met in a worse position than they are right now.

This is an emotional issue for the public. On the one hand they want to feel secure amidst bomb and terror attacks on UK soil, but they also want to believe that the gun-packing terror squads in operation are above reproach at all times. Most people's reaction to hearing about an innocent being gunned down is to ask, "How can this happen?". It's even worse when we hear that they put 7 bullets in his head - it's the correct way to stop a terrorist pressing the trigger of a bomb but it becomes unthinkable when it turns out to be an innocent man laying in a pool of blood.

We need Blair to acknowledge the errors then have procedures tightened accordingly; but he also has to reiterate the need for instant response teams who in other cases show they are exemplary at averting acts of mass murder.

It's going to be a tough PR call, but sacking the boss is enough to send ripples of doubt through the whole constabulary; and I don't think I want the terror squad to be thinking twice about pulling the trigger if I, or any of my family and friends, were sat near a possible terrorist.

[Sput]

Who the jiggly bollocks is Andy?

[Alarsne53]

Who the jiggly bollocks is Andy?

You?

[Sput]

I THINK I WOULD KNOW IF IT WERE ME YOU TADGER. I think gav's been at the Smirnoff again.

[Alarsne53]

Oh, I thought you were playing games Sputty