Cressida Dick: New Met chief must tackle policing culture, says Priti Patel
The new Metropolitan Police commissioner must tackle police culture and conduct, Priti Patel has said.
Writing in the Evening Standard, the home secretary said "strong and decisive new leadership will be required to restore public confidence".
Dame Cressida said she had been left with "no choice" but to resign, after London's mayor made it clear to her he had no confidence in her leadership.
It follows cases of sexism and misogyny among some Met officers.
Last week, the police watchdog found "disgraceful" examples of bullying and sexual harassment at Charing Cross police station in central London.
Dame Cressida, the first woman to lead the UK's biggest police force, also faced criticism over the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer last year, and a series of other scandals.
Beyond London, the Met is also responsible for national counter-terrorism policing, and Ms Patel said the Met commissioner was "a national leader, with a critical national role".
The BBC has been told the home secretary has clashed with the Labour mayor over the resignation.
Home Office sources said they were "astounded" that Mr Khan's previous comment that Dame Cressida had "days and weeks" to sort out the Met turned into "less than 48 hours".
Dame Cressida is thought to have offered her resignation after declining to meet Mr Khan to discuss her plans for reforming the Met - but the BBC understands he did not inform Priti Patel about the meeting.
She said she had "agreed to stay for a short period to ensure the stability of the Met".
Her successor will be appointed by the home secretary, in consultation with the mayor of London. Contenders include Matt Jukes and Neil Basu, who are both assistant Met commissioners.
Prime ministers have no formal role in appointing the commissioner, but Boris Johnson has nevertheless faced calls to stay out of the process entirely because of the ongoing Met investigation into lockdown parties at Downing Street.
Home affairs committee chairwoman Diana Johnson, a Labour MP, said she hoped Mr Johnson would "completely stand aside from any discussion about who the knew commissioner should be".
Former Met Police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson told LBC "we should be casting the net as wide as possible" to find the best candidate for the role, including outside policing.
Ms Patel said the new commissioner must be "focused on the basics", including tackling the abuse of women and girls, drugs and knife crime.
"Policing culture and conduct have rightly come under scrutiny," she added. "Be in no doubt that a new leader must tackle these institutional issues."
But Sir Peter Fahy, a former chief constable for Greater Manchester Police, said the idea that replacing one commissioner would change policing culture was "naive".
He told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme Dame Cressida's resignation would be "a blow" to female officers who saw her as a role model - and could put people off applying for senior positions.
Ken Marsh, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers in London, said Dame Cressida had been unfairly treated and the association had believed "she was the person who could take us through this".
Speaking on BBC London hours before her departure was announced, Dame Cressida insisted that she had "absolutely no intention" of quitting, and that she was "seething angry" about the culture at Charing Cross, which was exposed by the police watchdog.
But Mr Khan said he was "not satisfied" with Dame Cressida's response to the scale of change required to "root out" racism, sexism, homophobia, bullying and misogyny in the Met.
The Met had submitted a plan to Mr Khan last Friday on reforming the force and a meeting was due to be held on Thursday afternoon.
A City Hall source said Mr Khan made it clear through his officials - but not directly to the commissioner - that the plan was not going to work and the meeting was cancelled.
Susan Hall, leader of the Greater London Assembly Conservatives, said Mr Khan had handled the situation "extremely badly".
She said the resignation made Londoners less safe and left a "void" at the top of the Met.
Dame Cressida, who served in the role for almost five years and was recently given a two-year contract extension, said in a statement: "The murder of Sarah Everard and many other awful cases recently have, I know, damaged confidence in this fantastic police service.
"There is much to do - and I know that the Met has turned its full attention to rebuilding public trust and confidence."
Harvey Proctor, a former MP falsely accused of murder during a disastrous probe into claims of a VIP paedophile ring, said her departure had come not a "day too soon" and called for a full inquiry into all her "personal mistakes".
The partner of a man who was murdered by serial killer Stephen Port said the resignation was "about time" and that Dame Cressida was not capable of dealing with the homophobia, sexism and racism within the Met.
Ricky Waumsley previously called for her to quit after an inquest jury found police failures had likely contributed to the death of his partner Daniel Whitworth and two more of Port's victims.
Controversies of Cressida Dick's career
Image source, Reuters- Officers based at Charing Cross police station were found by an inquiry to have joked about rape and exchanged offensive social media messages. The Met said it was "deeply sorry"
- The delay to the publication of Sue Gray's full report into lockdown parties at Downing Street was a "stitch-up" between the Met and No 10, the SNP and Liberal Democrats said. The Met's investigation is ongoing
- The rape, abduction and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met Police officer prompted a wave of criticism and scrutiny
- Further controversy came when clashes broke out between women and police officers at a vigil in her memory, held under Covid lockdown measures
- There was condemnation of how police handled the murder of two women, Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, in a park in Wembley. Two constables were jailed for sharing photos of the murdered sisters' bodies and their mother said their disappearance would have been dealt with more urgently if they were white
- Dame Cressida also had to deal with the repercussions from the disastrous Operation Midland, the multimillion-pound investigation which saw detectives duped by false claims of a VIP sex abuse ring made by the paedophile and fantasist Carl Beech
- A report by an independent panel set up in 2013 into the unsolved murder of Daniel Morgan accused the force of institutional corruption, and found that the then-Assistant Commissioner Dame Cressida had initially refused to grant access to a police internal data system
- Before she became commissioner, she was in charge of the operation that led to the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by officers who mistook him for a suicide bomber
No comments