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Sir Robert Mark (13 March 1917 – 30 September 2010) was a senior United Kingdom police officer who served as Chief Constable of Leicester City Police, and later as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1972 to 1977.
Mark was the first Metropolitan Commissioner to have risen through all the ranks from the lowest to the highest (a route followed by all subsequent Commissioners), although a few predecessors had served as Constables prior to fast-track promotion.
He was commissioned into the Royal Armoured Corps in October 1943. He initially served with the 108th Regiment (Lancashire Fusiliers), but through the influence of his elder brother James, who worked at the War Office, he then transferred to the Manchester Regiment in December 1943, attached to the GHQ Liaison Regiment, known as Phantom, which provided liaison with special forces units. With them, he took part in the Normandy landings. In 1945 he was promoted captain and posted to the military government at Bad Oeynhausen in Germany, where he remained until his demobilisation as a major in 1947.
Following the 1966 escape of the spy George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs, Mark was appointed to the Mountbatten inquiry into prison security. Here he attracted the attention of Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, and in February 1967 was appointed Assistant Commissioner "D" (Personnel and Training) of the Metropolitan Police, where his welcome was less than ecstatic from a force that did not like outsiders; at the end of his first week, he was encouraged by Commissioner Sir Joseph Simpson to apply for the post of Chief Constable of Lancashire.
The following year he was briefly appointed Assistant Commissioner "B" (Traffic). However, in March 1968, Simpson died in office. Peter Brodie, Assistant Commissioner "C" (Crime), was widely tipped to succeed him, but Home Secretary James Callaghan saw the opportunity to impose government will on the force and offered the job to Mark. Mark, realising that an outsider would not be accepted at this time, suggested the appointment of Deputy Commissioner Sir John Waldron, with himself succeeding Waldron as Deputy Commissioner.
The uniformed branch began to gain precedence and CID was increasingly put under uniformed command. In 1971, with Brodie, an old-school officer who commanded CID, out of the country, Mark formed A10, a special unit established to investigate corruption. Among those rooted out were Commander Kenneth Drury, head of the Flying Squad, and Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Moody, head of the Obscene Publications Squad and ironically also of the Anti-Corruption Squad. Both were jailed, along with several other officers, and nearly 500 more were dismissed or forced to resign.
In general, he was supported by the uniformed branch, who were themselves exasperated with CID corruption.
Although popular with liberals for his stamping out of police corruption, Mark was himself far from a liberal, had no time for anti-establishment demonstrators and such groups as the National Council for Civil Liberties, and was responsible for the expansion of the Special Patrol Group, whose paramilitary methods provoked considerable criticism. Mark resigned in 1977 following a public disagreement with Jenkins, then Home Secretary, over the Police Act 1976 and the introduction of an independent police complaints body, which Mark considered would undermine police discipline and effective investigation.
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Mark received the Freedom of the City of Westminster on 22 June 1977 and the City of London on 23 July 1979, and the Freedom of the City of New York from Mayor John Lindsay. He received the of Doctor of Letters from the Loughborough University of Technology in December 1976 and Doctor of Laws from the University of Liverpool on 6 July 1978.
In 1976, Mark travelled to the United States to chair a conference designed to assist the Washington, D.C.–based Police Foundation in setting up the Police Executive Research Forum, a think tank devoted to training police executives and improving management practices.
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