emerged that it cost £27,000. Haringey comments In 2006, in comments to the Times newspaper, Blair claimed that the London Borough of Haringey was a safe enough place to leave doors unlocked. Metropolitan Police Authority member Damian Hockney described Blair's remarks as "truly extraordinary". Unsupported claims of involvement in the Balcombe Street siege The Guardian published on 30 March 2007 a story detailing inconsistencies between an account Blair gave of his involvement in the Balcombe Street Siege on the night of 6 December 1975, and the recollections of others involved at the time. In a 2006 interview, Blair had stated: "We turned the corner, and there is the car ... It was a very defining moment. I think I spent the next half an hour pretending to be a bush. They got out of the car and started firing at us. It is an interesting experience being fired at when you have absolutely nothing to fire back with ... I loved it. I loved the job." Steve Moysey, a U.S.-based British academic, who researched and published a detailed history of the IRA campaign in London, and the resulting Balcombe Street siege, was puzzled by apparent inconsistencies and contacted John Purnell, who with his partner Phil McVeigh, were the first policemen to confront the Balcombe Street gang. Purnell said: "I've never for one second associated Ian Blair with Balcombe Street in any shape or form, and his account of seeing [the terrorists] get out of the car and being shot at as they got out of the car is totally impossible." Blair admitted he had not personally seen the IRA men getting out of their car and opening fire, and stated: "I didn't see it and I didn't say I saw it." He added he had briefly joined the car chase after encountering the IRA car in Park Street near the original shooting. "We turned into Park Street and there were two or three vehicles in front of us going extremely fast." He believed one was the "bandit car" and another may have been a taxi, but Blair and his sergeant were not able to keep up "because we were driving a Hillman Hunter which has a top speed of 25mph minus". The actual top speed of the least powerful Hillman Hunter in 1975 was 83 mph and the top speed of a 70s-era taxi was 60 mph. According to Purnell: