Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter
THE HEAD of Scotland Yard, Sir Ian Blair, will visit Jamaica for three days beginning next Wednesday, The Gleaner has learnt. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner will be meeting with Minister of National Security Dr. Peter Phillips, ministry officials and police to discuss continued law enforcement cooperation between Jamaica and the United Kingdom.
Members of a Scotland Yard community liaison group will also be visiting Jamaica next week to advise the Ministry of National Security on how to establish similar groups here. They are from the Independent Advisory Group (IAG) of Operation Trident, the Scotland Yard unit established to tackle gun crime in London's black communities.
The group will include head of Operation Trident Deputy Chief Superintendent John Coles.
CONTINUED COOPERATION
"Sir Ian will be meeting to discuss the continued law enforcement cooperation between both countries, particularly violent and drug crime," said Mark Waller, British High Commission press and political affairs officer.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Mark Shields was appointed from Scotland Yard as part of the cooperation.
Sir Ian served as deputy commissioner for four years and is known to be close to the U.K. Government, whose members were impressed with his work to modernise the police force.
He became commissioner in February and created a stir on the first day on the job by questioning the U.K. middle-class's social acceptance of cocaine use, expressing sympathy for the negative effects it caused poorer communities in London and countries caught up in the trade, such as Jamaica.
"People die for cocaine and people must understand this," Sir Ian said. "The price of cocaine is misery on the streets of London's estates and blood on the roads to Colombia and Afghanistan."
Sir Ian's visit comes at a time of controversy for the Metropolitan Police following their mistaken killing of Brazilian electrician Charles de Menezes. Police shot dead Mr. Menezes as a suspected suicide bomber on a London Underground, two weeks after suicide bomb attacks killed 52 people on the London Transport System on July 7.
Scotland Yard has been criticised for its differing accounts of the incident, which have been gradually leaked
to the press and Sir Ian has denied allegations of a police cover-up. Leaked documents from the independent investigation contradict original police and witness versions of events and subsequent reports.
