Robert Frederick Quick QPM (born 25 April 1959) is a British former senior police officer.
[citation needed] From 1978 to 1991, he served in a range of positions in both uniform and CID in South London, dealing with armed robbery, drug trafficking, murder and other serious offences.
[3] In 2000 he was appointed head of the Metropolitan Police CIB and Anti-Corruption Command overseeing corruption investigations and public complaints.
[4] For this operation he was widely praised for the restraint shown, in what was at the time London's longest armed siege.
An ensuing investigation by Quick found that documents had been stolen from the home secretary's safe, including correspondence with the prime minister;[10] this led to the arrest of senior civil servant Christopher Galley who implicated two prominent opposition MPs.
[12] Opposition Conservative MPs claimed the police were acting under the orders of, or with knowledge of, the then-Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.
In response, Quick made public comments suggesting Conservative politicians and the press were seeking to undermine him.
[11] On 8 April 2009, when Quick arrived at a briefing at 10 Downing Street he inadvertently exposed a document marked Secret[15] dealing with "Operation Pathway" to photographers[16] which compromised the counter-terrorist operation which the document concerned, forcing police in the North West of England to strike sooner than planned, making twelve arrests within hours.
[20] In 2017, the Green controversy was revived when Quick told journalists that the police had found pornography on a computer seized from the politician's office during the 2008 raids.
[21] Subsequently, Green was found to have lied and was asked to resign from the Cabinet by Prime Minister Theresa May.