Draft:Alan Edmund Grove Blades

Alan Edmund Grove Blades ( – 6 February 1980) was a Singaporean police officer who served as the director of the Special Branch from 1950 to 1957 and as the Deoputy Commissioner of Police before serving as the Commissioner of Police from September 1957 to 1963.

https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/page/straitstimes19630831-1.1.9 (image)

also E. A. G. Blades

Career

In 1930, Blades joined the Straits Settlements Police Force as a probationary Assistant Superintendent. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in September 1932. Blades "made his name" in the police force when he arrested Mamoru Shinozaki, "Japan's No. 1 Spy in Singapore", in 1940. He learnt to speak Hokkien and Japanese in Xiamen and Japan respectively. He then involved himself in the war effort in India during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. He returned to Singapore after the end of the occupation in 1945 and joined the O.C. Security Service.

From 1950 to 1957, he directed the Special Branch. Blades was appointed the acting Deputy Commissioner of Police in place of acting Deputy Commissioner Douglas Broadhurst, who was to act as Commissioner while Commissioner Nigel Morris was on leave. In August 1957, he was appointed the Deputy Commissioner of Police. He was appointed commissioner in September. He was the last expatriate to serve in that role.

On 21 March 1963, Blades resigned as Commissioner of Police to become a police advisor to the Federation of Malaya. He was to assist Malayan Director of Police Affairs Claude Fenner in planning a new Pan-Malayan Police Force.

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Personal life and death

After retiring as police commissioner, Blades left for Hampshire, England, where he was to remain on vacation for two months, on 3 September.

Blades died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Dorset, England on 6 February 1980.