Three times a week in the boardroom on the eighth floor at New Scotland Yard, Sir Ian Blair meets his senior team to review the events of the day and plan.

This was the forum that I attended for years, including several tense meetings after the tragic fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005.

On a routine day you can expect to be out of the meeting within the hour.

At the moment, with the Met managing a tumultuous period and a new allegation emerging every week, my guess is that those meetings will last until lunchtime.

The storm battering Scotland Yard is unrelenting and hardly the ideal environment in which to prepare for Mr de Menezes’s inquest, to be held at the Oval cricket ground conference centre next week.

The inquest, by law, is concerned only with examining the circumstances that led to his death.

Nevertheless, much hangs on the deliberations of the jury. The family will want all the facts aired to enable the jury to reach a verdict that will determine how and why their son was shot dead.

The Metropolitan Police and, more importantly, the Commissioner, will be agonising over whether they might be faced with a verdict that an innocent man was unlawfully killed. The dilemma for the Met is ensuring that appropriate respect is shown to the family while the force tries to avoid an “unlawful killing” verdict and all the difficulties that would bring. The danger is that the proceedings could degenerate into political posturing.

This is not a time for the Met to attempt to deflect criticism by announcing that it has restructured units or introduced new operational policies.

The de Menezes family have lost a loved one. The police sought to protect the public, never intending to kill an innocent man. Whatever the outcome, this inquest should not be a stage for recriminations.

Humility should be the order of the day and it falls to those in authority to show that example. It is important to show remorse and acknowledge mistakes. If not, the Met and its political masters could be seen as disingenuous – an impression that would compound the family’s grief and further damage the reputation of the force.

The only victors at the Oval should be cricketers. Andy Hayman is former Assistant Commissioner for Special Operations at Scotland Yard

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Margot Fonteyn: In her footsteps
• Forget beautiful people, let's have wonky Brits
• Fundamentalist brew: faith and power