Government Backs London Police Chief

The police chief of London, under increasing fire over his officers’ killing of a Brazilian man they mistook for a terrorist, received a vote of confidence Saturday from Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration.

Electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot to death last month in the London subway, and his family has been demanding the resignation of the head of the Metropolitan Police force, Ian Blair. Documents leaked from the police investigation last week appear to contradict initial statements by the police chief about the shooting.

Although he called Menezes’ death a “tragedy,” British Home Secretary Charles Clarke on Saturday praised the chief and his officers for their handling of the July 7 terrorist attacks in London, a second attempted wave of bombings on July 21 and their inquiry into the Brazilian’s death.

“I’m very happy with the conduct not only of Sir Ian Blair but of the whole Metropolitan Police in relation to this inquiry,” Clarke said. “From the public order events through to the investigation of the terrible atrocities on July 7 and 21, the Metropolitan Police have done very well.”

“Obviously the death of Mr. Menezes was a terrible tragedy, as everybody acknowledges, and it needs to be very properly and fully investigated, which is what the Independent Police Complaints Commission is doing,” he added.

The day after the July 21 attempted bombings, police who had been following Menezes confronted him in a London subway station, holding him down and firing at least seven bullets into his head. He had been tailed by several officers for nearly half an hour since leaving his house for work about 9:30 a.m.

The inquiry is seeking to determine why officers did not prevent a person they believed was a terrorism suspect from entering a crowded subway. They also followed him as he took a bus.

Typically, most London police have not carried weapons, and many Britons were surprised to learn after Menezes’ shooting that the capital’s police have what amounts to a “shoot-to-kill” policy.

The policy, codenamed Operation Kratos, is in effect a set of guidelines issued by the Assn. of Chief Police Officers on the use of force. It suggests shooting terrorism suspects in the head if there is a danger that aiming at their chests might detonate a bomb.

In a country with no death penalty, whose human rights law specifically prohibits execution and torture, the killing of Menezes has prompted passionate debate about how the police had been given such powers without public discussion.

Police have been urged to reconsider the policy. On Saturday, a spokeswoman for the department said authorities had reviewed the “shoot-to-kill” guidance and left it largely unchanged.

“We have made one or two small changes, but the operation remains essentially the same,” said the spokeswoman, who did not elaborate on the changes.

Jenny Jones of the Metropolitan Police Authority, an independent body of London citizens that is supposed to oversee policing in the city but has little real power, called it “absolutely inadequate” for police “to look at it and say, ‘It’s fine.’

“We are all in danger and it’s appropriate now to put this policy to public scrutiny, so everyone understands when they might be putting themselves into danger,” she said. “This can’t go on.”

Len Duval, chairman of the MPA, agreed that there was a growing consensus for a public inquiry on the policy, but he urged caution.

“The issue of suicide bombers is not going away, and there needs to be an effective way of dealing with this threat,” he told the Independent newspaper.

In an interview Saturday with the Daily Mail newspaper, Police Chief Blair, who is not related to the prime minister, said officers would continue to use deadly force to stop possible terrorist attacks.

“The methods that were used appeared to be the least worst option” for tackling suicide bombers, he said. “We still have the procedure in use.”

Hours after Menezes’ shooting, the police chief said the shooting was “directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation.”

Scotland Yard was also quoted as saying that Menezes’ “clothing and demeanor” added to suspicions that he was a suicide bomber.

But documents and photographs leaked last week showed Menezes’ body, on the floor of the subway car where he was shot, clothed in a denim jacket -- not a bulky one as first described.

And although witnesses were quoted as saying he ran from police and vaulted over a ticket barrier to escape, closed-circuit TV footage aired on British television showed him entering the station at a normal pace, taking a newspaper from a stand and calmly riding an escalator down to the platform.

In today’s edition of the tabloid News of the World, the beleaguered police chief said he learned that Menezes was not a suicide bomber only the day after the shooting.

“Somebody came in about 10:30 and said the equivalent of, ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ ” he told the paper.

On July 23, the police acknowledged that an innocent man had been shot and swiftly apologized to the Menezes family.

Menezes’ relatives have accused the police chief of lying about aspects of the shooting and attempting a cover-up, allegations the chief denies. The police department has also denied recent media reports that it offered the family $1 million in compensation.