Dame Cressida Dick to stand down as Met police commissioner

[muriel_volestrangler]

Dame Cressida Dick is to stand down as commissioner of the Metropolitan police after a series of scandals.

The decision follows a public falling out with the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, who put her “on notice” that she had to rapidly reform the Met or lose his confidence in her leadership.
...
Khan’s confidence in Dick was shaken by a scandal at Charing Cross police station where officers shared racist, sexist, misogynistic and Islamophobic messages.

The London mayor was angered because of the 14 officers investigated, nine remain in the Met​. Furthermore, two were promoted from constable to sergeant, one of whom had attended a misconduct meeting.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/10/dame-cressida-dick-to-stand-down-as-met-police-commissioner

She should never have been promoted after overseeing the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes:

‘Cressida Dick should have quit 16 years ago,’ say family of Jean Charles de Menezes who police wrongly killed

The cousin of an innocent Brazilian man shot dead in London by police commanded by Cressida Dick has called for her to resign, saying that her family was “offended” when she was made Metropolitan Police commissioner.

Patricia Armani da Silva, 47, told i that she felt “very sad” that recent failings by the force had been brought to light years after her cousin Jean Charles de Menezes was killed. “My feelings about this lady are very simple,” she said. “I think she had to resign 16 years ago.”

Mr de Menezes, 27, was killed at Stockwell Tube station in south London on 22 July 2005, two weeks after the 7/7 bombings in London, in a counter-terrorism operation led by Dame Cressida.

Officers had mistaken the innocent Brazilan electrician for the terrorist Hussain Osman, who they believed lived in the same block of flats in Tulse Hill where Mrs Armani da Silva and Mr de Menezes shared an apartment with another cousin.

https://inews.co.uk/news/jean-charles-de-menezes-cousin-saying-it-for-16-years-cressida-dick-absolutely-has-to-resign-1450658

She was a literal danger to the public.

[OnDoutside]

1. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[Soph0571]

2. Much to be happy about with this

London deserves much better

[OnDoutside]

4. Absolutely. My brother in law retired from the Met Police and

got a letter offering him a chance to come out of retirement and stay on for another few years. He crumpled it up and threw it straight into the bin.

[T_i_B]

3. Will her successor be any better

Will we get somebody promoted whose main qualification is being well connected?

[Soph0571]

5. Can't be worse

Small steps... *sigh*

[OnDoutside]

6. Like Sajid Javids brother ?

[Celerity]

7. BoJo's party planner

[LeftishBrit]

8. Dick by name, dick by nature

[Emrys]

9. The inexplicable aggression and brutality with which the Met dealt with the demonstration

following the Sarah Everard murder should have been reason enough on its own for Dick to resign in utter shame. If ever there was a time for sensitive policing, but it seems to be something the Met is institutionally incapable of sustaining. It can't even rely on individual police officers to behave in socially acceptable ways.

As a police service, the Met's had a terrible reputation stretching back, just in my memory, to the Miners' Strike, various demonstrations nationwide by the the 1980s peace movement (if you knew the Met had been shipped in, you expected trouble), and a number of Stop the City demonstrations in London, not to mention Jean Charles de Menezes, who died brutally as a victim of Met overreaction directly under Dick's supervision, and Ian Tomlinson, who was attacked totally unprovoked by an officer and soon after died in what an inquest jury found to be an unlawful killing. Investigations into both those last incidents were hampered by repeated blatant lies from police officers and the Met as a body.

Under Dick, this has extended to what should have been everyday policing, where women (in particular, but indeed, anybody) can no longer feel safe seeking out a London bobby for help if they're feeling vulnerable or in danger.

Good riddance. She failed upwards for far too long. I expect she'll end up in the Lords once the dust has died down, given the favours Johnson owes her from his time as mayor and beyond.

[LeftishBrit]

10. Farewell Cressida Dick, the Met chief only interested in one thing: ignoring bad coppers

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/11/farewell-cressida-dick-the-met-chief-only-interested-in-one-thing-ignoring-bad-coppers?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR30wOACKtnX7K-evjLvBSw9sXdtAgzeKqJ3hvpUXLs5hvbslspTSVNSXT4

[Emrys]

11. Marina Hyde's really on serious form there!

It deserves quoting the allowed four paras:

Farewell, Cressida Dick, the Met chief only interested in one thing: ignoring bad coppers
Dick seemed more angered by poor policing on TV than in real life. She’ll be missed by her friends in government, if no one else

Cressida Dick absolutely despised Line of Duty. The endlessly promoted Metropolitan police chief really crossed the road to tip on the BBC smash hit – so tellingly incensed by a show about sidelined cops doing the painful and unpopular work of rooting out bad apples. As Dame Cressida finally resigns from the spoilt barrel of the Met, I couldn’t help but recall a 2019 Radio Times interview in which she expanded on her issues.

“I was absolutely outraged by the level of casual and extreme corruption that was being portrayed as the way the police is,” Dick told the magazine. “It’s so far from that. The standards and professionalism are so high.” Mmm. It was left to the show’s creator, Jed Mercurio, to offer a little background. “My inspiration for creating Line of Duty was @metpoliceuk shooting an innocent man and their dishonesty in the aftermath,” he explained icily, “so thanks to Cressida Dick for reminding me of our connection.” Dick, of course, ran the bungled counterterrorism operation that resulted in Met officers fatally shooting Jean Charles de Menezes, an entirely innocent 27-year-old electrician.

But oddly – indeed, bizarrely – that wasn’t the only Mercurio creation the Met chief had issues with. Both in the Radio Times interview and in an earlier outing on GMB, she added that she’d had to switch off the BBC’s Bodyguard – at the time, the most watched drama since current records began – because she couldn’t handle the mere idea of the two protagonists beginning a sexual relationship. As she put it: “The moment when the home secretary made a pass at the protection officer was just beyond me, I’m afraid.” And yet, beyond her how? Beyond her why? In recent memory, a police protection officer had been dismissed for allegedly having an affair with the wife of the then home secretary, Alan Johnson. At the time, the special operations directorate to which he reported was being run by one Cressida Dick.

Forgive me for beginning by focusing on Dick’s outrage about entirely fictional events, when she appeared to experience only mild displeasure at so many hideously real situations involving her officers. But Dame Cressida’s telly critiques unwittingly revealed her most deadly flaws: a total failure of imagination, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, and a total loyalty to officers that superseded all else. The public came a very distant second, and increasingly knew it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/11/farewell-cressida-dick-the-met-chief-only-interested-in-one-thing-ignoring-bad-coppers