Met chief tried to stop shooting inquiry

Sir Ian Blair always struck me as a straight talking, no-nonsense kind of chap. However if this story is true and he honestly did try to stop an IPCC investigation into the killing of an obviously innocent man then he should step down. If the person had been shot and there were doubts as to his innocence then fair enough, the excuse of keeping the IPCC out of it would have some validity but there were no doubts almost directly after the killing.

Britain's top police officer, the Scotland Yard commissioner Sir Ian Blair, attempted to stop an independent external investigation into the shooting of a young Brazilian mistaken for a suicide bomber, it emerged yesterday.
Sir Ian wrote to John Gieve, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, on July 22, the morning Jean Charles de Menezes was shot at short range on the London tube. The commissioner argued for an internal inquiry into the killing on the grounds that the ongoing anti-terrorist investigation took precedence over any independent look into his death.

According to senior police and Whitehall sources, Sir Ian was concerned that an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission could impact on national security and intelligence. He was also understood to be worried that an outside investigation would damage the morale of CO19, the elite firearms section working under enormous pressure.

"We did make an error, the IPCC should have been called in immediately," the police source said.

It was an error, and the IPCC should've been called in immediately.