Britain's most senior police officer, Sir Ian Blair, has called for more ethnic minority and local officers to help the fight against terrorism following the July 7 attacks in London.
In a high-profile speech on BBC television on Wednesday, Blair argued that ordinary officers were just as important to national security as counter-terrorism specialists or intelligence officers.
Beat officers or even civilian community support officers are also more likely to be the first to confront a terrorist, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner said.
Highlighting the failed July 21 bombings in London, Blair said the presence of a neighborhood police team could have led to the alleged plot being detected sooner.
Fifty-six people died on July 7, including the four apparent suicide bombers, with 700 injured.
At risk
"Britain remains a target of the highest possible priority for al-Qaeda and its affiliates. We are in a new reality," Blair warned during the annual Dimbleby lecture in Shoreditch, east London.
"The sky is dark and terrorists seek mass casualties and are entirely indiscriminate. Every community is at risk, which is the starkest of reasons why we need representatives of every community in our ranks."
Currently, one in five officers in the Met are from an ethnic minority and efforts are ongoing to recruit more.
But Blair said making London more representative of the capital was not "cosmetic."
"Understanding other cultures is a straight-forward business requirement," he said.
Blair used the occasion to call for a "widespread, fundamental debate" about the nature of modern policing in Britain.
Policing
Arguing for a "holistic" service that could deal with everything from "truancy to terror, from graffiti to gunmen," he stressed the need for an "open" public discussion about the future of British policing.
The Met were widely criticized for their previously secret tactic to deal with would-be suicide bombers after armed officers mistakenly shot dead Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes.
The shooting was a "watershed," Blair said, and meant discussions about the use of lethal force by police could no longer take place in private.
In the televised speech, he said: "What we should seek to avoid, at all costs, is a separation of local, neighborhood policing from either serious criminal investigation or counter-terrorist investigation."
Referring to the July 21 attempted bombings, Blair said a local authority worker identified the flat which three men shown on CCTV images had frequented but also mentioned finding dozens of empty peroxide bottles in wastebins.
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