Met chief ‘should consider her position’ after damning report into murder
THE family of a private investigator murdered in the 1980s has said Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick should “absolutely” be considering her position after an inquiry found extensive corruption in the force.
Alastair Morgan has been campaigning for decades for justice for his brother Daniel, who was killed with an axe in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in
Sydenham, south-east London, on March 10 1987.
No-one has been brought to justice for the killing – an attempted prosecution in 1989 was dropped before it came to court, while a trial of five people in 2011 collapsed before a jury could return a verdict.
A report by an independent panel published yesterday accused the Met of “a form of institutional corruption” for concealing or denying failings over the unsolved murder.
It also said obstructive behaviour by the force had dragged an inquiry expected to take 12 months out to eight years.
Following its publication Alastair Morgan told a press conference Dame Cressida should “absolutely” be considering her position at the head of the force.
Mr Morgan said Dame Cressida had been in charge of disclosure of information to the inquiry at one point.
“She has made it very difficult. Whether she should resign? I think certainly we need much better leadership than she has provided here,” he said.
He added: “Anyone with any knowledge of the history of the police knows how much they hate scrutiny, and I think she has been true to form in that respect.”
But his partner, Kirsteen Knight, remarked that Dame Cressida, who was appointed Met Commissioner in 2017, was “no worse than any of the other commissioners that we’ve had to deal with”.
In a statement, the Morgan family said they “welcomed” the inquiry’s findings.
The statement said: “In particular, we welcome the recognition that we – and the public at large – have been failed over the decades by a culture of corruption and cover-up in the Metropolitan Police, an institutionalised corruption that has permeated successive regimes in the Metropolitan Police and beyond to this day.”
The family said they had been aware of police corruption at the heart of the investigation three weeks after the murder, and have been lobbying for justice and transparency for more than three decades.