Lord Imbert
Met Police Commissioner BORN APRIL 27, 1933 DIED NOVEMBER 13, 2017, AGED 84
FORMER Metropolitan Police Commissioner Peter Imbert was not afraid of controversy. In 1979, when Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, he allowed the BBC to make the controversial five-part series Police, showing his team at work.
It included footage of the very unkind treatment of a rape victim by male investigating officers, which caused such a furore that it prompted a change in the way rape allegations were dealt with.
He also helpfully gave Newsnight, which was running a profile of him, details of his detractors. “I don’t want to be remembered as just a bland Mr Plod. I’d rather you had the complete picture,” he said.
But there were tensions in 1989 when the Guildford Four were released. Although he was not personally involved, Imbert had been a member of the Metropolitan Police bomb squad at the time and saw all four defendants during the initial detention.
He was also involved in the Balcombe Street siege of December 1975, when he persuaded an IRA active service unit to surrender. The leader of the Balcombe Street gang then confessed to the pub bombings at both Guildford and Woolwich.
Peter Michael Imbert was born in Folkestone, Kent, on April 27, 1933, and attended The Harvey Grammar School in Folkestone, and the Holborn College of Law, Languages and Commerce. He did National Service in the RAF before joining the Met in 1953, when he became a foot-duty constable.
He was later attached to the Bomb Squad (which became the Anti-Terrorist Branch), where he flourished. He became Metropolitan Police Commissioner in 1987 and retired six years later.
He married Iris Dove in 1956. She and their son and two daughters survive him.