2009-04-10
post/94810033
Police chief, Bob Quick, resigns over terror blunder - Times Online
This is one of those news photographs that doesn’t just illustrate, but becomes the story. On Wednesday, then-Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick was photographed (by Steve Back of Political Pictures - someone I’d love to see an interview with) showing a Top Secret dossier.
The photograph quickly hit the wires, escaped the UK (where a D-notice was being issued to suppress it), and as a result, a planned series of arrests in the north-west were brought forward from dawn on Thursday to Wednesday evening. By Thursday morning (after a set of front pages carrying the offending image), Quick had resigned.
(As an aside, it’s interesting to me that these were taken outside 10 Downing Street, which is closed to the general public, and has been for two decades. Of course, it’s still open to journalists, but I can imagine feeling as if it was as private were I to work there. Perhaps Quick felt the same.)
