Having armed police on Tube will make Londoners feel 'less secure',

Staff reporter(wp/es):

Having armed police on the Tube will make Londoners feel "less secure", according to the Met Police commander who headed up security for London 2012.

Following a bomb alert at North Greenwich station earlier this month, it was revealed that armed police are to travel on London Underground trains.

For the first time they will move between jobs on the Tube instead of in cars, in the hope that their presence in carriages will reassure the public.

However, Bob Broadhurst, who has served in the Met Police for 36 years, told MailOnline while improving security is important in the short-term, in the long-run it could unnerve the public.

Mr Broadhurst said: "Police have to react to things like we saw last week [in North Greenwich].

"I have no doubt, in the short time, that having more patrols and firearms officers is the right thing to do.

"But in my opinion it only works in the short-term before it becomes counter productive and actually makes the public feel less secure unless there is a here and now threat.

"It would have to be reviewed regularly to see if it were working."

Mr Broadhurst, who is now a Special Advisor to the Security & Counter Terror Expo, added: "We had a similar thing after the 7/7 bombings. 

"We had thousands of officers around the underground for a few days, but in less than a week people were asking why there were so many officers if there was no imminent threat."

North Greenwich station was closed off while a bomb squad carried out a controlled explosion on a device on October 20.

Damon Smith, a student at London Metropolitan University, has been charged in connection with the incident.