Bob Quick (police officer)

Robert "Bob" Quick, QPM (born c. 1952) is a former Assistant Commissioner (Specialist CO-Operations) of London's Metropolitan Police Service responsible for counter-terrorism within the United Kingdom.^[1]

Police career

Quick joined the police service in 1978, first serving in Lambeth.

In December 2002, he took charge of a police operation in east London to deal with a gunman who had taken a hostage at a flat in Hackney. For this operation he was widely praised for the restraint shown, in what was at the time London's longest armed siege.^[2]

He later became Chief Constable of Surrey. In 2008 he was succeeded by Mark Rowley as Chief Constable.^[3] Quick then returned to London to become an assistant commissioner.

Controversy

On 8 April 2009, when Quick arrived at a briefing at 10 Downing Street he inadvertently exposed a document marked Secret^[4] dealing with "Operation Pathway" to photographers^[5] which compromised the counter-terrorist operation which the document concerned, forcing police in the North West of England to strike sooner than planned, making twelve arrests within hours.^[6] He resigned the following day and was replaced by John Yates.^[7]

References

1. "Biography page for Bob Quick". Metropolitan Police Service. Archived from the original on January 2, 2009. Retrieved 9 April 2009.
2. "Profile: Bob Quick". BBC News. 9 April 2009. Retrieved 9 April 2009.
3. Police Oracle website
4. Vikram Dodd; David Batty (2009-04-09). "Police chief Bob Quick steps down over terror blunder". The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-04-11.
5. "Zoomed photograph of document". The Guardian. 2009-04-09. Retrieved 2009-04-11.
6. "Terror raids follow files blunder". BBC News. 8 April 2009. Retrieved 8 April 2009.
7. "Police chief quits over blunder". BBC News. 9 April 2009. Retrieved 9 April 2009.

External links

• Bob Quick profile in The Guardian