By Ben Kerrigan-
Dame Cressida Dick has defiantly stated that she has “absolutely no intention” of standing down. Onn Wednesday, she maintained that she has been leading the Metropolitan police “very well”.
The police commissioner chief denied she was complacent or arrogant on Thursday, insisting she had transformed the force which has been hit by a series of scandals. Those claims to do match the spate of shocking and disturbing conduct by police officers
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Dick is under intense pressure from London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, after last week’s embarrassing revelations of officers at Charing Cross police station sending a barrage of messages that were racist and Islamophobic, and who bragged about violence toward women. Nine of fourteen officers guilty of the obscene and deplorable messages are still in the force.
On Wednesday, Khan insisted Dick must produce a compelling new plan to turn Scotland Yard around. Otherwise, he will publicly declare he has lost confidence in her – which government sources say should lead to her resignation.
Dick said during a phone-in show on BBC London : “I have absolutely no intention of going and I believe that I am, and have been actually for the last five years, leading a real transformation in the Met.
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“We have a service now, which is I’m absolutely certain, more professional, fairer, more transparent, more accountable, and closer to its communities and more effective in, for example, reducing violent crime, which has been going down year on year on year in almost every category.”
She added: “I have been leading the Met very well.”
She claimed she had sent the mayor the plan he wanted last Friday, with Khan launching a barrage of criticism in media interviews days after. City Hall said he was studying the letter and expected to hear more at their next meeting, which is expected within days.
On Wednesday, Khan told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he wanted action soon from Dick and also signalled that his trust and confidence in her leadership of Britain’s biggest force was under serious strain.
Khan said: “I have been quite clear to the commissioner: my expectation is the next time I see her I want to see what her response is to the examples not of one officer, of 14 officers being involved in racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, Islamophobic and the like behaviour, nine of whom are still serving.
“Secondly, what her plans are to win back the trust and confidence that’s been both been knocked and shattered as a consequence.”
Asked if Dick still had his trust, Khan said: “That will be contingent upon the response from the commissioner the next time I see her.”
Crucially, she accepted she needed the confidence of both the home secretary and London mayor to continue.
“My role depends absolutely on those two role holders, the mayor of London and the home secretary … having trust and confidence in me,” she said. “They extended my contract just a few months ago. I sat at a meeting with them just three weeks ago at which the mayor said he had never had more confidence in the Met’s ability to deliver.”
She added: “My ability to do a good job depends on having an effective working relationship and a trusting relationship with them.”
The mayor of London is also the police and crime commissioner for the capital. The home secretary appoints the commissioner and has to have due regard for the mayor’s views.
Dick said she was “laying down the law” to the Met, telling officers “enough is enough” and that those with discriminatory attitudes should leave. She assured whistleblowers they were safe to report wrongdoing without fear of reprisal. “We’ve got a problem of too much very bad behaviour and I’m determined with my team to sort that out,” she said.
She added: “I think about my leadership all the time. I am not an arrogant person, I do adapt, I do change. I have absolutely done my very, very, very best and I will continue to do so until the day I finish as commissioner.”
Dick’s five-year term concludes this April and she is then scheduled to start a two-year extension, granted by the home secretary and agreed by Khan last September.
Dick said the revelations about hate messages at Charing Cross between 2016 and 2018 angered her. The fact that nine of those investigated are still in the Met and two were promoted, one of whom, Dick said, had no finding of wrongdoing against them.
The commissioner said: “I am seething angry about the whole thing. I’m very glad that the four individuals have left.
“There is no place in the Met for sexism or racism or homophobia, for abuse [of] trust or for bullying, and in the last few days I have gone out extremely strongly to my colleagues and told them enough is enough.”
Those words appear to be mere rhetoric without the kind of action people want to see.
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