MET CHIEF MUST GO
EXCLUSIVE: With Cressida Dick poised to get two more years, group of leading figures wronged by Yard pen damning letter to PM, demanding...
A LANDMARK panel of victims of police corruption, incompetence and malpractice today call for the head of Cressida Dick.
In a bombshell open letter to Boris Johnson, they said the disaster-prone Met commissioner should not be handed a two-year contract extension as expected.
Led by Stephen Lawrence’s trailblazing mother, Baroness Lawrence, and Lady Brittan, widow of Tory home secretary Leon Brittan, the signatories all give Dame Cressida a resounding vote of no confidence.
They also demand an overhaul of the Met’s senior team, ‘urgent and long overdue’ reform of the police complaints system and a shake-up of the ‘unfit for purpose’ Independent office for Police Conduct.
The group call for an ‘urgent’ meeting with the Prime Minister and Home Secretary Priti Patel to ‘ensure that meaningful reform is delivered within a reasonable timeframe’.
They say: ‘we share a collective concern that the leadership of the Metropolitan Police Service will continue to act as though they are above the law
She has presided over a culture of failure and cover-up
and that the general public do not have a viable means of recourse.’
The group of seven influential figures includes the son of D-Day hero Lord Bramall, BBC broadcaster Paul Gambaccini, the brother of axe murder victim Daniel Morgan, Edward Heath’s biographer Michael McManus and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor.
They drafted a joint statement after the Daily Mail invited them to an unprecedented debate on their own experiences of Met malpractice and corruption, and the effectiveness of the police complaints system.
Their extraordinary intervention follows a string of controversies and scandals that have engulfed Dame Cressida since she was appointed Scotland Yard chief on a five-year contract in 2017.
The group tell the Prime Minister: ‘Dame Cressida Dick, who has presided over a culture of incompetence and cover-up, must not have her contract extended and must be properly investigated for her conduct, along with her predecessors and those in her inner circle, who she appointed and who have questions to answer.
‘She should be replaced by an appointee from outside London, via a truly independent and transparent process.’
They say they write ‘as a group of concerned individuals seeking urgent and long overdue reform of policing, the police complaints system and, in particular, the Metropolitan Police Service’.
And they add: ‘Our stories and individual experiences are very different but we have all been vic tims of the incompetence and malpractice which pervades the leadership of the MPS. This includes racial discrimination, systemic corruption and the reckless and unjustified harassment of innocent people.
‘After decades of equivocation and inertia, we are calling for immediate and decisive action from your administration. We have – reluctantly – become public figures as a result of our experiences but we are determined to use our voice to push for reform. This is the only way to restore confidence in our capital’s police service, and to ensure that these injustices cannot be repeated.’ They say there ‘must be accountability’ in the police.
‘A system which allows the police to set the parameters of the inquiries into their own misconduct, as was and is the case after Operation Midland, is self-evidently broken,’ they write.
‘The Independent Office for Police Conduct, which is supposed to oversee complaints against the police, is demonstrably unfit for purpose as it is currently structured.
‘A functional governance system must be established, led by a credible and legally-trained individual, and they must be given the powers to investigate and hold the police services to account. The IOPC must themselves be properly accountable to the Home Secretary with an independent oversight mechanism.’
The widely-expected decision to give Dame Cressida a contract extension comes just weeks after a
‘Equivocation and inertia’
‘She doesn’t have the skills’
senior Government figure privately cast doubt on her prospects of staying in post following a string of controversies including her handling of the Operation Midland VIP child abuse inquiry scandal.
In June, Dame Cressida was engulfed in cover-up claims after an official £20million report branded the Met ‘institutionally corrupt’ and accused her of trying to thwart an inquiry into the unsolved axe murder of private eye Daniel Morgan.
His brother Alastair is one of the seven figures to sign today’s letter to the Prime Minister. Dame Cressida has rejected the key findings of the probe into the Morgan case, which has been mired in allegations of police corruption.
Last night the Home Office did not confirm Dame Cressida’s contract extension – saying the process was ‘ongoing’. Insiders said there was still some ‘procedural stuff’ to sign off before it was formally announced. Sources said there was concern about the lack of suitable replacements with one claiming it is ‘a case of better the devil you know’.
This claim caused bemusement in senior police circles with two well qualified chief constables understood to have been preparing to apply for the commissioner’s job. Moves to give Dame Cressida two more years in charge even prompted anger from within senior Met ranks. One highly influential figure who leads hundreds of officers told the Mail: ‘It’s an unbelievable disgrace – what on earth is going on?’
Asked to comment on whether Dame Cressida should get an extra term, Baroness Lawrence said: ‘I just think there’s been too many mistakes that she has made in her tenure as commissioner. She’s the first woman commissioner and that’s good for diversity but if you’re not doing your job properly then that should make no difference whatsoever.’
Lady Brittan, whose two homes were raided by Operation Midland detectives six weeks after her husband Leon died and received £100,000 in compensation from the Met for the bungled raids, said: ‘I’m not one to have personal grudges but I think that she’s the wrong person.
‘When you have an organisation that has had a certain amount of scandals, the leader has to be exceptionally good, exceptionally strong, exceptionally talented, exceptionally gifted.
‘You have to have a lot of integrity and you also have to be very clear about, if you’ve got to do
unpleasant things, you do them. If you’re a really good leader, you don’t indulge in cover up.
‘When something horrible has gone wrong, they’re able to fall on their swords because that’s very often the decent thing to do, not an easy thing to do, and in our current political climate, it seems to be nobody falls on their swords.
‘She came in with very high hopes but it may be that just for this particular time she doesn’t have the skills that you need at this moment.’
Last month it was revealed that Dame Cressida was facing a potential misconduct probe over her open support of one of her most controversial senior officers, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Horne, who could stand trial over alleged data breaches.
It was announced that the embattled Scotland Yard chief has been referred to the police watchdog over her ‘public comments and alleged actions’ in relation to Mr Horne.
Away from ‘cover-up’ controversies, Dame Cressida has also been under fire over her force’s woeful security operation at the Euro 2020 final at Wembley this summer.
Despite widespread condemnation of police tactics, she has backed her officers to the hilt and tried to deflect blame for the fiasco.
The Met was also condemned this year over its policing of a vigil for murder victim Sarah Everard. Officers moved in and made arrests citing coronavirus restrictions.
WHEN decent, law-abiding folk accuse the Metropolitan Police of systemic corruption, harassment of the innocent, and racial discrimination, it’s time for the Government to sit up and take notice.
Seven people who have experienced or witnessed the Met’s ineptitude and dishonesty have written a letter to the Prime Minister in which they call for greater accountability and better oversight.
They also demand that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick — whom they accuse of having ‘presided over a culture of incompetence’ — shouldn’t have her five-year contract extended when it expires next April.
Invaded
These complainants, brought together by the Mail, come from different backgrounds. They represent many shades of political opinion. But they are united in their deep distrust of Britain’s largest police force.
What was done to these people, or those dear to them, by the Met could happen to any of us. This is a shocking indictment. We are brought up to have faith in the police as an institution. How is that possible when we learn of such unforgivable behaviour?
The Hampshire home of the late Lord Bramall, an elderly war hero, was invaded by police in the early hours on the basis of allegations of paedophile abuse made by Carl Beech, a palpable fantasist. Bramall told his son Nick that ‘he had never been so mortally wounded, even in battle’.
Doreen Lawrence had to endure many years of indifference (which she partly attributes to racism) on the part of the Metropolitan Police after the murder of her son, Stephen, in 1993.
Nick Bramall and Baroness Lawrence were among the victims assembled by this newspaper. Their stories are very different but they share a common theme. The Met can be overbearing, devious and callous.
Oh, when the excesses and errors are finally uncovered the force is very good at saying sorry. Lady Brittan, whose entirely innocent husband, Leon, was harried by the police as he was dying, received profuse apologies after his death. What good were they to her or him?
Actions count louder than words, and again and again the story is the same. No officer involved in Operation Midland — the botched investigation that resulted in false accusations against Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan, and another complainant, Harvey Proctor — received any official sanction.
Dame Cressida Dick herself is living proof that if you work for the Met, it’s possible to foul up and survive. Home Secretary Priti Patel and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who share responsibility for appointing the next Commissioner, appear poised to give Dame Cressida another two years.
How can this be justified? In June, an official report described her force as ‘institutionally corrupt’, and concluded that she had personally placed ‘hurdles’ in the way of a search for the truth about the death of Daniel Morgan.
Mr Morgan, a private investigator, was brutally killed in a London car park in 1987. The Met has never found his murderer, and appears to have gone out of its way not to. His brother, Alastair, is another of the signatories of the letter to the PM.
Baroness O’Loan, who led the recent investigation, accused Dame Cressida Dick of ‘obfuscation’. You’d think that would constitute a knock-out blow, and precipitate her resignation, since Metropolitan Police Commissioners are not supposed put up smokescreens during official inquiries.
But she survived, as she always does, and as senior Met police officers who err usually do. She emerged unscathed earlier this year after her force provoked outrage by outlawing a peaceful vigil on Clapham Common to honour Sarah Everard, who’d been abducted and murdered by a serving police officer, PC Wayne Couzens.
The recruitment of Couzens, whose former colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary nearly ten years ago allegedly nicknamed him ‘the rapist’, might in itself have been thought grounds for Dame Cressida to consider her position. I don’t suppose it crossed her mind to fall on her sword.
But then she has always had the amazing knack of evading responsibility. In 2005, she was in overall charge of the operation which resulted in the appalling death of the wholly innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, in a London Underground station. Police pumped seven bullets into his head.
As usual, no officer, including Cressida Dick, faced any charges, and no one was reprimanded. All that happened was that the Met was found guilty of breaching health and safety laws, and putting the public at risk. It was fined £175,000 and ordered to pay £385,000 costs. That’s taxpayers’ money.
Mistakes
It is true, of course, that some of the allegations made by the seven signatories don’t concern the Commissioner personally. For example, although she sanctioned Operation Midland, she can’t be held culpable for all its failings.
On the other hand, in 2019 she refused to allow an inquiry into the conduct of officers involved in Operation Midland after exHigh Court judge Sir Richard Henriques revealed they had used false evidence to obtain a search warrant for the raids. Dame Cressida ludicrously said that an inquiry would be ‘completely improper’.
Here is someone for whom drawing a veil over her own mistakes, and those of subordinates allegedly at fault, has become second nature. As the signatories rightly say, the Met is not adequately accountable.
When there is a supposedly impartial investigation of its misbehaviour, this is carried out by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which often finds in the Met’s favour.
Unsurprisingly, it was its equally accommodating predecessor, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), that gave the Met and Dame Cressida a clean bill of health over the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes.
Risible
I don’t suggest that she is in any way a bad person. No doubt she is intelligent and diligent. But she has become institutionalised, and as part of that process has lost whatever capacity she once had for examining herself and her force.
What is needed is someone with a new perspective from outside London who can get to grips with the Met’s shortcomings. It’s risible to suggest that such a person doesn’t exist in the upper echelons of the police, and therefore Dame Cressida might as well be reappointed for a further couple of years.
When Boris Johnson became London Mayor in 2008, one of his first actions was to ease out Ian Blair, then Metropolitan Commissioner, who has always been a supporter of Dame Cressida.
If only Priti Patel and Sadiq Khan had the courage to bid her farewell, rather than clinging on to her in a half-hearted way out of a misguided belief that they can’t find anyone better.
Here are seven victims from all walks of life with first-hand knowledge of the Met’s deficiencies. Their criticisms are devastating. I believe they speak on behalf of most lawabiding people.
Needless to say, an efficient police force is essential in the capital and elsewhere, and I’m certain society couldn’t begin to function without the dedication of ordinary police officers.
But Britain’s most senior police officer should stand down now. If the politicians daren’t get rid of her, our only hope is that she has enough sense of honour to accept that the time has come for her to go.