Humbled by the soon-to-be-famous comedian, Blair didn't know what to do for a living, until careers advisers suggested the police. "I couldn't think of a reason why not. From that moment I've been fascinated," he says. "It is the most extraordinarily varied profession. But I do think you have to be reasonably good at acting, or projecting, and getting your message across."
The message he's keen to get across to the housing sector is to get involved in fighting crime. There are three types of police work, explains Blair: the everyday stuff of tackling robberies, assaults, 999 calls; the "stranger violence" – terrorism and murder – and finally, the "reassurance policing". "It's about graffiti, smashed telephone boxes, smashed bus stops," says Blair. "It's about parks with louts hanging about where the kids ought to be able to play, it's about the neighbours from hell, the drug addicts, the drunks, the noisy and nasty."
The reason the police need the housing sector's help is that their attention is commanded by the first two types of crime. "If the police have a choice between looking for somebody who's smashed up a bus stop or looking for a burglar, the public are going to say 'go and find the burglar'," says Blair.
Agents of social cohesion
But he is determined to tackle the minor crimes because they are "an advert of failure, and we know that makes people feel uneasy". It is this that led him, in September 2002, to persuade the Home Office to introduce police community support officers. Now his aim is to boost the PCSO network and to encourage greater joint working on antisocial behaviour. To this end, he spoke at a Barnet council conference on nuisance on 23 October – not the type of event usually frequented by high-ranking police officers.
Housing workers and neighbourhood wardens are "agents of social cohesion" who work alongside the community support officers, says Blair, but he is adamant that this does not mean he wants housing staff to plug a policing deficit. "The answer, surely, is that neither party should be left to fill the gap," he says in a voice polite but stern. "The various agencies should work collaboratively."
He does concede, however, that some housing associations have been cold-shouldered by their local crime and disorder reduction partnerships: "The CDRPs need to be more welcoming to organised housing groups, but there is also a responsibility on the housing people to say 'let's go and join in'." If housing associations are prepared to get fully involved in making change they will be welcome, he says. But he warns: "If you're just going to sit there and say 'we want somebody to do this for us', you may not be quite so welcome."
He is, however, quick to praise landlords such as the Peabody Trust, Circle 33 and East Thames as associations that "have got stuck in" on the nuisance agenda. He admits he knows little about specific initiatives, but says he has heard good things about Richmond Housing Partnership's anti-graffiti project, Paint Brush Diplomacy, which encourages youngsters to ditch spray cans in favour of painting and decorating. The best ideas, Blair believes, come from the grassroots.
He is now throwing down the gauntlet to housing organisations to come up with even more innovative solutions. "It's patchy," he says. "I think we need to do better. For instance, every London borough now has an antisocial behaviour coordinator inside the council, and usually they would welcome approaches from housing associations."
He praises the home secretary's plans for community policing, unveiled last month, such as the idea of "community advocates" liaising between police and residents, giving the public a greater say in how the service is run. In the police sector, debate still rages over community policing versus specialist units, but according to Blair: "What the home secretary has caught is the mood that, actually, we've got to do both."
Blair is also very interested in the idea of community courts and would like to try one out in London. "The judge, the prosecutor and the defence representatives remain the same people, so that when the judge makes a community-based order, if the offender agrees and does not deliver it, he or she appears again in front of the same judge in front of the same community. The excuses are not going to be there, and I like that idea."
Reformer
This willingness to adopt new ideas is only to be expected from a man who, in his three decades in the force, has gained a reputation as a liberal-thinking moderniser. In 1985, his book Investigating Rape: A New Approach for Police led to a radical shake-up of how sexual assault was investigated, which he says is his proudest achievement. He presided over the launch of the Metropolitan Police Authority in 2000, a move that made the force publicly accountable for the first time in its 170-year history.
Lord Toby Harris, chairman of the authority, says the deputy commissioner has "steely resolve and steadfast professionalism" and describes him as "a true intellectual with a long-term strategy about the future of policing". However, while some praise his academic background and businesslike approach, others claim these attributes make him a rather inaccessible figure to the grassroots. One senior London police source says Blair lacks the common touch and isn't a "copper's copper" like his boss, commissioner Sir John Stevens.
That's not to say he hasn't pounded the beat: his first job was as a police constable in Soho in 1974. "It was fairly lively and colourful place," says Blair wryly. "It was good fun. Knowing pimps and tarts on first-name terms is an unusual experience.
"But later I was responsible for the identification of the dead at King's Cross after the fire; that wasn't a pleasant time." After a variety of senior roles in divisions from the Met to Thames Valley and Surrey, he was knighted for services to policing in June and is tipped to succeed Stevens in 2005, when the commissioner plans to step down.
Blair admits it is tough balancing his desk duties with meeting frontline staff, but says this is a challenge faced by many chief executives: deputy commissioner since 2000, Blair is second in command of a £2.2bn budget organisation with 26,300 officers and 1100 civilian staff.
He remains passionate about "making a difference to communities in which the need for security is increasing exponentially". Providing that security, he says, depends on "the agents of social cohesion". "The combination of policing, housing and other local authority services is the future," adds Blair. "I'm positive it's the future."
Sir Ian Blair
Age50
Family
Married, two teenage children
Education
Christ Church College, Oxford
Career highlights
Member of the command staff involved in resolving the siege of the Libyan People’s Bureau, 1984; managed Met Police Crime Investigation Project to redesign structure of all London CID offices, 1988; responsible for most of the embassies in London, 1989; ran Operation Galley in1993, which was then the largest police corruption inquiry in London for 10 years; responsible for policing Newbury Bypass, 1995-96
Hobbies
Skiing, tennis and theatre
Source
Housing Today
Postscript
Next week, housing officers enter the fight against hard drugs in Hackney
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