Outrage as Met chief gets two more years

She should have been fired long ago, say critics

CRITICS of Cressida Dick vented their outrage last night after she was granted a two-year extension at Scotland Yard.

Stephen Lawrence’s father blamed the Met chief for two ‘disastrous’ decisions that had ended his hope of seeing every member of the racist gang who killed his son face justice.

Angrily attacking home Secretary Priti Patel’s decision to keep Dame Cressida on, Neville Lawrence said the officer had twice ‘betrayed the trust’ he had placed in her.

he was joined in his condemnation by the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, who was mistakenly shot dead in an operation headed by Dame Cressida. The Scotland Yard commissioner ‘should have been fired long ago, not had her contract extended,’ Maria de Menezes, 76, said last night from her home in Brazil.

Dr Lawrence said the first ‘disastrous’ setback in bringing his son’s killers to justice came in 2012 when Dame Cressida enforced the retirement of Clive Driscoll, a brilliant detective whose five-year re-investigation resulted in two of Stephen’s killers being jailed for life.

The second setback came last summer, when Dame Cressida asked Dr Lawrence and his former wife Baroness Lawrence to Scotland Yard to break the devastating news that, although at least three of the murderers remain at large, the landmark case was being closed.

‘If they want Cressida Dick for another

She has presided over a culture of failure and cover-up From Thursday’s Mail

two years, it’s up to them, but as far as I’m concerned she has done nothing to deserve it,’ Dr Lawrence said last night from his Jamaican home.

‘I thought she would drive through the changes that are badly needed in the Met, and make it a better place, but since she became commissioner, what has she done? Nothing.

‘In my view, the Metropolitan Police is an apartheid organisation. And the job they were intended to do – to protect the public from crime, regardless of who they are – the Met no longer do that.

‘They are stopping reputable people because of their colour, even parliamentarians and people driving home with their children.’

Dame Cressida was gold commander when innocent electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was pinned down and shot dead at Stockwell tube station having been mistaken for a suicide bomber.

his mother said: ‘I have always held her complicit in Jean’s death. I knew she wasn’t the right person to command a police force and it causes me pain every day that she was given this position. She should have been fired long ago.

‘Jean’s death was a brutality which should never have happened and if she was a good leader who knew how to control her officers he might still be alive today.’

radio DJ Paul Gambaccini, who was arrested during Operation Yewtree in 2013 and spent a year on bail before the case was dropped, joined six other victims of police malpractice to write to Boris Johnson earlier this week urging him to appoint a different commissioner. he said it was a ‘very foolish’ decision to extend Dame Cressida’s leadership. however she was last night given the full support of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents more than 30,000 rank-andfile officers in London. Its chairman Ken Marsh said that her ‘ability to communicate with officers of all ranks was quite incredible’.

Dame Cressida said she was ‘immensely honoured’ by her renewed appointment.