Chief of Scotland Yard To End Turbulent Term

LONDON, Oct. 2 -- Scotland Yard chief Ian Blair, whose tumultuous tenure included the London transit bombings of 2005 and his officers' killing of a man wrongly suspected of being a bomber, resigned Thursday, saying he did not have the backing of London Mayor Boris Johnson.

"Personally I see no bar to working effectively with the new mayor, but it is there that we differ and hence I am unable to continue," said Blair, 55.

Johnson, who took office in May, issued a statement saying Blair, a 34-year veteran of the force, had "done the right thing" by announcing that he will leave the job Dec. 1. "There comes a time in any organization when it becomes clear it would benefit from new leadership and clarity of purpose," Johnson said. "I believe that time is now."

Although the police chief's job is not a political position, reaction to Blair's resignation after 3 1/2 years in the job divided largely along political lines.

He was lavishly praised by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other members of the ruling Labor Party and harshly criticized by the political opposition, led by members of Johnson's Conservative Party.

Supporters said Blair is a highly articulate, Oxford-educated intellectual who tried to modernize Britain's largest police force at a time of unprecedented upheaval.

The transit bombings of July 7, 2005, killed 52 passengers and four bombers and injured 700 other people in the worst attacks on British soil since World War II. The police were widely credited with conducting a quick and effective investigation of the bombings and of a failed copycat attack two weeks later.

"Ian Blair has made a huge personal contribution to the safety and security of our country, leading the national police effort against terrorism and the fight against crime, successfully introducing neighborhood policing in London and cutting crime in the capital very significantly," Brown said.

But critics blamed Blair's leadership for a dark stain on Scotland Yard's performance after the second round of transit attacks: the death of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, who was shot seven times on a London subway car by officers who mistook him for a suicide bomber.

None of the officers involved in the shooting was charged with a crime, but a British court found the police department guilty of violating health and safety regulations in the case. Although an independent investigation cleared him of personal wrongdoing, Blair apologized for the killing.

Dominic Grieve, the Conservative Party's spokesman for security matters, said Brown and other government leaders had shown "a serious lack of judgment" in keeping Blair on after "the serial and systematic failings at the Metropolitan Police disclosed during the de Menezes trial."

Chris Huhne, a spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, Britain's third-largest political party, said that Blair "had become part of the Met's problem, not its solution," and that "his resignation is long overdue following a string of embarrassments for his force."

Blair had also been criticized by minority officers, who accused him of favoring white officers for promotion. The force's most senior Asian officer, Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, has been critical of Blair's leadership and filed a claim of religious and racial discrimination against the force.

On Thursday, the Daily Mail newspaper reported that Blair had paid a friend more than $30,000 in public funds to help "sharpen his image" before he took over the department in 2005.

Blair had no immediate response to the report.

Tim Newburn, professor of criminology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said Blair was a "very resilient person who clearly had managed to keep going through a whole series of difficult times -- I fully expected he would ride out whatever storms."

Special correspondent Karla Adam contributed to this report.