Scotland Yard Chief Steps Down

Dame Cressida Dick. Photo courtesy BBC.

In a story that will resonate with many former female police chiefs in the U.S., the London Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, resigned Thursday.

Just two days after she had announced publicly that she was not going to resign in the face of the many controversies that have mired her tenure, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced he no longer had confidence in her leadership.

She became the first woman to be head of fabled Scotland Yard when she was appointed in 2017.

Numerous U.S. female police chiefs have fallen foul of the shifting sands of political support and been forced out of office, as Prof. Dorothy Schulz wrote in The Crime Report.

Mixing politics and policing is unusual in the UK, but the precedent may have been  set in 2008, when then-Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair was forced out by then-Mayor of London (and now Prime Minister) Boris Johnson.

To most observers in the UK, Dame Cressida had already appeared to be a “dead man walking,” when, in a surprise move, the Home Secretary extended her contract. This show of support in her by the Home Office — the government body that always confirms senior police appointments at that level— came to an abrupt end when yet another report about flaws in the police service emerged, further damaging public confidence in the Metropolitan Police.

It is unique in UK policing that the Commissioner has two political masters, the London Mayor and the Home Secretary who currently sit on opposite sides of the political divide. Both have gone on record recently criticizing the leadership at the top of the Metropolitan Police. The latest disclosure concerning racist, sexist, homophobic and misogynistic behavior by officers in central London, seems to have snapped their patience.

Dame Cressida’s critics will say that in her fifth year in the top job in UK policing, that she has had plenty of time to recognize the internal cultural problems that blight her organization and put them right.

Her supporters, which include the London Police Federation,  said that she has been treated unfairly, and that she was absolutely the right person to see the Metropolitan Police through this very difficult period in their history.

The Police Federation represent the majority of the 20,000 staff that work in the Met and there is no doubt that Dame Cressida was extremely well liked by, and popular with, the rank-and-file police officers in London.

However, it is these very officers that have let her down time and time again, and caused her leadership to be exposed to extreme scrutiny.  From kidnap, rape and murder to allegations of institutional racism, corruption, homophobia and misogyny, it has been too much for the London establishment to take.

The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, will now begin the search for a new Commissioner.

A poisoned chalice, maybe. But there is no doubt that whoever is appointed in due course, he or she will need to have the gravitas and experience to quickly get to grips with the culture and succeed where Dame Cressida could not.

A very tall order indeed.

See also: Scotland Yard Chief Fights to Keep Her Job

Gareth Bryon is a former Detective Chief Superintendent who worked as a senior officer in the South Wales Police and the British Transport Police, where he led major crime investigation and forensic science services for over 30 years.