Bomb expert who rushed to London to help on 7/7

Ten years ago, four suicide bombers attacked central London, killing 52 people and injuring hundreds more.

Cdr Dominic Murphy, now head of the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism squad, had been an officer with Hertfordshire Police for 12 years at the time.

Having trained as a bomb scene examiner, he said he rushed to London and was "so struck" by the professionalism and commitment of officers, that he decided to stay with the Met.

"The way that commitment portrayed itself to their service to the public and the victims was overwhelming for me," he said.

"I was an officer who could be called into London or some other part of the country to help SO13 (the former Met anti-terrorist branch) if they were responding to a terrorist attack, or conduct searches or support them in some way," Cdr Murphy explained.

He recalled when he saw the horror of the events on the television.

"I remember sitting in the special branch office, which is our intelligence unit in Hertfordshire, and I was watching this unfold on TV, and I did that thing that police officers shouldn't really do.

"I didn't wait to be deployed. I spoke to my line manager and grabbed a car and all my kit and equipment and drove straight down to London to be here as quickly as I could."

In London he was deployed to work with the Met's forensic management team.

"These were the officers and staff that were leading the response at the scenes to gather the evidence and recover those that had been unfortunately killed in the incident," said Cdr Murphy.

"I arrived to something I would describe as a really high pace of activity, the sort of activity you would expect policing to be doing at a terrible incident like this, but of course, this was on a scale and a type of incident we had never seen.

"I was struck by all of those counter-terrorism officers from SO13 that I met, their professionalism, their commitment to finding who was responsible for this attack, their overwhelming compassion for victims... that compassion extended to how they recovered those that were deceased from the attacks.

"I was struck by the end of that first day to see the professionalism and the pace they were working at."

After this experience, Cdr Murphy said he never wanted to work anywhere else.

"I really only ever wanted to work with this group of people who I thought were some of the most impressive people I'd ever seen, and just the way that commitment portrayed itself to their service to the public and the victims was overwhelming for me.

"So I had been a Hertfordshire officer for nearly 12 years at that point, but I never really went back to Hertfordshire.

"I stayed here then, and have been here in counter-terrorism for the rest of my career."

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