Managing the reputation of Britain’s top policeman

I was in London at the end of last week and took the opportunity to catch up with a former colleague who now runs the press operation at Scotland Yard.

He’s only been in post for a few weeks, but in that short space of time has had to deal with more crisis management work than most PRs see in a lifetime!

At the centre of much of this negative publicity is the Met Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who seems to stumble from one crisis to the next.

His reputation has never really recovered from the shooting of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes exactly three years ago tomorrow.  And that reputation is likely to be even more tattered when the inquest into de Menezes death gets underway in September.

Sir Ian has always maintained that he did not know his officers had shot an innocent man until he was told a full day afterwards. Many of Sir Ian’s harshest critics do not believe this account. However, even if true, it is staggering that Britain’s most senior police officer was kept in the dark for so long after such a catastrophic event had occurred.

The Daily Mail and others in the media never liked Sir Ian anyway, but since the de Menezes affair it seems they have become hell-bent on driving him from office.

While Sir Ian may be living on borrowed time – surely a damning verdict at the inquest would be the final nail in his coffin.

However, critics of Sir Ian should also remember that his job and that of his colleagues in the frontline of policing are not for the faint-hearted.

While the de Menezes affair grabs many of the headlines, each day across London officers, many much more junior than Sir Ian, are having to make life and death decisions in order to fight the capital’s ever escalating crime problem.