Labour London Assembly Member and Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority Len Duvall has written to Conservative Mayoral Candidate Boris Johnson accusing him of trying to distance himself from remarks he made last week on the BBC’s World at One programme about officers involved in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.
Interviewed on the programme Mr Johnson said:
“I think the real reason Jean Charles de Menezes got killed in the Stockwell Tube was not just because the police were too trigger happy, although I think you could argue that they were, but also because if you look at the chain of events that led to up his killing he was accompanied by several police officers throughout that morning, several surveillance officers, and at no stage did they think it worthwhile or think it possible to tap him on the shoulder and inquire who he was.”
The comments were attacked at the time by Mayor ken Livingstone who called them a “slur against people who regularly put their lives in extreme danger to protect Londoners.”
Mr Johnson defended his his record on the issue saying: “in previous radio interviews and written articles I have already said these officers were as brave as lions.” Johnson also said he had received an apology from the BBC “for cutting me off half way through the interview.”
In today’s letter Mr Duvall accuses Mr Johnson of “trying to distance yourself from your remarks and twist the context in which you made them to suggest that you were misrepresented by the BBC.”
He also accuses Johnson of “a fundamental misunderstanding of policing in the capital” adding “To deny that you made such comments instead of apologising is an insult to everyone in the Met.”
Mr Johnson says he has “absolutely no intention” of withdrawing the use of the phrase ‘trigger happy’. In a defiantly worded response to Mr Duvall he says:
“You seem to want me to withdraw the use of the word “trigger happy” in respect of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes.
I have absolutely no intention of doing so. It is hard to think of any other description of a catastrophe in which a completely innocent man ends up with seven bullets in his head.
I have made it repeatedly clear that I believe the officers involved to have been personally extremely brave.
But I remain deeply dismayed that neither you nor the Mayor nor anyone else seems willing to address the fundamental question in the minds of the London public.
If this man was thought to be a potential suicide bomber, why the hell was he allowed on two buses, and then down the Tube? Why was he allowed to put the public at progressively greater risk?
Many people believe that common sense policing would have allowed his identity to be established at a much earlier stage.”
Damian Hockney AM says
This cack handed defence of his own crass remarks reveals that Boris
Johnson has even less understanding of policing in London than I’d
thought. The MPA Chair Len Duvall is reasonably asking him to withdraw
the “trigger happy” remarks, and he could at least have clarified that
he was making an off the cuff remark and he has had time to reconsider.
But no. He makes no real defence and digs a deeper hole with his
comment that ‘no-one’ is prepared to address the fundamental questions
relating to the circumstances surrounding the events of July 22 in
Stockwell.
No-one? Where has he been? I’m sorry but this is simply not true and
must not be allowed to pass. What on earth have the plice complaints
commission (IPCC), Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) and recently the
courts been trying to establish along with the Met ever since that
awful tragic date? Has Mr Johnson been to one of our public meetings or
scrutinies, seen the way in which we all – including members of his own
party, four of whom sit on the Authority – have used every power in our
hand to hold the Met to account? Including the high risk approach of a
vote of confidence in the Commissioner which came about after the
revelation of so much of the detail Mr Johnson appears to think
‘no-one’ is willing to address.
It is honestly as if he is just not engaged with anything that is
happening in London, and doesn’t understand the real issues. His
approach is a retreat into badly advised un-researched casual
commentary about a serious issue that has exercised everyone involved
in policing to an enormous degree: badly phrased and offguard, the
original statement and the defence look like some desperate grasp for
something to say, which after the initial soundbite just runs into
quicksand. And which bears no examination.
Frankly if I was Len Duvall, I would now give up in exasperation at Mr
Johnson’s inability to grasp what he has said. I really can’t remember
the context, but on being told that someone was ‘swashbuckling’, an
unimpressed party once said that what was needed was a little less
‘swash’ and a little more ‘buckle’.