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Blair resignation calls intensify BBC Pressure is mounting on Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair to resign over the shooting of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes. The force broke health and safety laws when officers pursued Mr Menezes to a Tube station and shot him seven times, mistaking him for a terror suspect. Immediately after the verdict, Sir Ian announced he would remain in the job and was backed by the prime minister. But Tories and Lib Dems said he should take responsibility for Met failures.
"It was a horrific series of mistakes and he is the person responsible," said shadow attorney-general Dominic Grieve. He added that the whole incident was "rather shameful in terms of the competence of the police, that an innocent person should be shot in that fashion, when in fact there was a series of accidents that led up to it, which shouldn't have occurred". Richard Barnes, leader of the London Assembly Conservatives, and a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, said he would be pushing to have Sir Ian removed from his post. "What we can do is have a special meeting of the police authority to discuss this, and I called for that meeting to be called within the next seven days. "We can then take a vote of confidence if Sir Ian Blair does not accept his responsibilities." A former senior Met officer, Brian Paddick, told BBC One's Question Time that Sir Ian was wrong to say he would not resign without first taking some time for reflection.
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