London is now so safe that some people leave their doors unlocked, Met police chief Sir Ian Blair has claimed.

The commissioner said new beat police teams have made residents in Haringey, north London, feel as safe as they did 25 ago.

In an interview with an academic journal, Sir Ian said he met two officers who "adopted" a 19-storey tower block during a visit to the area.

"How long is it since the police patrolled the corridors of a tower block? It's as if, when the slums they replaced were flattened and they put that up, the police stopped patrolling.

"People are opening their doors, leaving their doors open now, or leaving them unlocked, certainly, in a way they haven't done for 25 years," he said.

Far from advising people to leave their doors open, the Met's website contains a host of tips on hatches, latches, bolts and chains to make doors more secure.

In the year to July, crime in Haringey has fallen by 7.4% to 33,138 offences - slightly more than across the 4.6% reduction across whole of London.

However, there were still 6,399 incidents of violence against a person and 2,834 home burglaries.

'Don't leave doors open'

A Met police spokesman said Sir Ian was "certainly not advocating people should leave their doors open".

"He was making the point that effective and visible local policing makes people feel safer, engendering a sense of community in which they have less need to be fearful and hide behind locked doors," the spokesman explained.

The interview with the commissioner, conducted in May, was published today in Criminal Justice Matters, the quarterly magazine of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at Kings College in London.

His comments provoked surprise locally. Neil Williams, Liberal Democrat leader on Haringey council, told The Times: "Community policing has brought enormous benefits in making people safer and encouraging them to report crime.

"But we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water, people still need to take sensible precautions with their home security and I'm sure the police officers in that area would say that, too."

Menezes 'damaging incident' In the interview, Sir Ian also said the police shooting of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes damaged the Met's reputation.

"Do I think that the death of Mr de Menezes was a damaging incident to the reputation of the Metropolitan Police Service? Of course I do.

"I mean what else could it be, we shot an innocent man, and we then did not handle the consequences of it well."

But he added: "While the death of Jean Charles de Menezes still has to be accounted for, (people) also weigh that in relation to how the Met responded on July 7.

"There were some extraordinary actions on the day of July 7, and people haven't forgotten that."