We know that it took Ian Blair a day to find out that an innocent man was killed by his officers. We know that he foresees little difficulty in retraining ex-soldiers to act as armed police officers, accelerating the trend towards paramilitary forces in British cities.
Sir Ian's suggestion that soldiers could be used as firearm officers is specially controversial after the shooting in London in July of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician mistaken for a suicide bomber the day after the failed July 21 attacks.
A Scotland Yard spokesman later said that retiring servicemen were just one group with pre-existing skills that could be hired on short-term contracts to allow police officers to focus on core policing activities. "It is absolutely not about hiring in soldiers for use on London’s streets," the spokesman said.
We also know that, infected by memes of 'command and control', he wishes to shortcircuit archaic constitutional liberties that protect the individual, reduce the accountability of the police and give them additional quasi-judicial powers:
Radical proposals for a new breed of supercop with on-the-spot powers to confiscate driving licences and issue Anti-Social Behaviour Orders have been put forward by Britain's top policeman.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, whose proposals were backed by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), admitted allowing officers to impose instant punishments could blur the line between police and magistrates.....
Director of civil rights group Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, accused the Commissioner of behaving like Judge Dredd, the post-apocalyptic policeman-come-executioner in British comic 2000AD, whose catchphrase is "I am the law".
Ian Blair stated that he thought of resigning (as if it were a particularly hard day at the office?) :
However, he told Mr Sakur he did not come "very close at all" to quitting. "Because the big job is to defend this country against terrorism and that's what I'm here to do." He added it would not have been right for the force, "the country or the city of London" for him to resign.
Yes it would.