Ian Blair (right), commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, addresses the media outside the Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey, in London yesterday. London's police force was found guilty yesterday of putting the public at risk over the killing of an innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, who police mistook for a suicide bomber in 2005. - Reuters

LONDON (Reuters):

London's police chief defied calls to resign yesterday after a jury convicted his force of endangering the public by shooting dead an innocent Brazilian on an underground train, mistaking him for a suicide bomber.

Police shot electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, seven times in the head after he boarded an underground train in south London on July 22, 2005.

They had wrongly identified him as one of four men who had tried to attack the city's transport system a day earlier.

The capital's Metropolitan Police Service was fined £175,000 (US$364,000) and ordered to pay legal costs of £385,000 after being convicted of a single charge of breaching health and safety rules which require it to protect the public.

Prosecutors had accused the force of a "shocking and catastrophic error" during the trial at London's Old Bailey Central Criminal Court, in a novel use of workplace health and safety laws against a police force.

No one punished

No individual police officers have been punished over the shooting. The Crown Prosecution Service decided last year there was insufficient evidence to charge any individual with crimes, a decision which the de Menezes family criticised.

The opposition Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties said police chief Sir Ian Blair should resign. But Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office said he still backed him.

"The commissioner and the Metropolitan Police remain in the forefront of the fight against crime and terrorism. They have my full confidence and our thanks and support in the difficult job that they do," Interior Minister Jacqui Smith said.

Blair said he would have resigned had the court found his force suffered from "systemic failures", but he would not quit over events "of a single day in extraordinary circumstances."

"It is important to remember that no police officer set out that day to shoot an innocent man," he said."