Former UK Top Cop: Lack Resources to Monitor All Terror Suspects

On May 24, the former commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, Lord Blair, claimed UK security services don’t have the resources to monitor all terror suspects.

This admission comes just days after a heinous terror attack on a British soldier in a London street.

“Obviously, the security services have limited resources–[and] they must prioritize to the people who are most likely to move from being interested in violent extremism to carrying it out,” Blair explained. “Then, even if you’ve got the resources to do it, you have to have very high levels of suspicion before you can put surveillance on. And thirdly… what are we monitoring? Because lots of people have very odd views.”

He said it is “enormously hard” to know at what point a person goes from being associated with a radical group to being a radical themselves. Blair said it is even harder to know when they are ready to act on that radicalism. 

Blair asserted that someone needs to be speaking to the UK public on behalf of security services to assure the public that “security services and the police are operating properly.” Right now, the public is at a loss for understanding how two men who were already on authorities’ radar could be have been free to commit Friday’s heinous terrorist attack that left British solider Lee Rigby dead.