Author: Lord Stevens
ISBN No: 0 753820838
Review date: 16/12/2025
No of pages: 362
Publisher: Orion Books
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
Memoirs by senior retired police officers are good reads.
First for their recollections of public events and crimes, and second if they have, like Sir John Stevens, since retirement taken up posts in private security – Lord Stevens being among other things a fellow of The Security Institute and chairman of Skills for Security.
Such men in the thick of policing – Keith Helliwell and Lord Mackenzie to name two – have such vivid material, it’d be difficult to write dully. Lord Stevens for instance was aboard a British Airways jet when 9-11 hit; and he opens his autobiography, Not For The Faint-Hearted, with a chapter about his first Northern Ireland inquiry incident room being burned by, he is sure, an arsonist. You get a remarkable insight into the man the next page when he mentions his (wartime) natural father left his mother and Lord Stevens does not even know his father’s first name. Nor is he interested, he says – a man who has investigated Army collusion via agents with terrorists in Ulster; and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales?!
Besides a fascinating account of his 41-year police career from constable to Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Stevens offers insights into how to run a large organisation – and secure sites; as Commissioner he insisted on wearing of ID passes at New Scotland Yard. On corruption, he details the police’s never-ending fight against corrupt officers. Note in the light of the Information Commissioner’s criticism of private investigators trading in personal data, that Lord Stevens writes of the ‘revolving door’ of corruption – criminals buying intelligence from officers, a private detective agency merely the conduit for (a few) corrupted police officers. A good chunk of the book is about his early career, including the 1986 arrest of thieving bag-handlers at Heathrow after surveillance.
Lord Stevens is one of those responsible for the current public policing landscape, that has private security as a (like it or not) partner. He had a hand in the Crime and Disorder Act, and the police force boundary changes to align with local government boundaries, to aid crime and disorder partnership work. And the names of senior policemen he worked with will ring bells in private security or private-public crime-fighting circles: such as the ‘formidable detective’ Roy Clark (last interviewed by Una Riley in our May 2006 issue, director of criminal investigations at HM Customs and Revenue) and (now Sir) Brian Hayes, since security adviser to the Football Association.
During his Ulster inquiries and as Met commissioner, he says, he set up, and valued, unpaid, informal advisory groups of outsiders: will he at Skills for Security?!
