THE MET POLICE Commissioner Cressida Dick in light of scandal after scandal engulfing the police force has sent a letter to all 43,000 officers and staff, admitting the force’s ‘public reputation had been damaged’ by too many instances of ‘poor conduct and nasty and inappropriate behaviour’.
She warned everyone serving on the force that prejudice, racism, homophobia and sexism would not be tolerated, adding: ‘If this is you I have a message: the Met does not want you. Leave now.’
She said if things did not improve the Met could face the ‘unthinkable prospect of losing public consent’.
Her letter comes after an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) uncovered evidence of officers at Charing Cross police station sharing vile social media messages in which they joked about ‘raping women and killing black children’.
It is the latest controversy to hit the Met, which is still reeling from the murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, a serving officer, last March.
Shortly after Wayne Couzens was jailed for life for the murder of Everard last year, two other serving officers were convicted of sharing photographs of two black murder victims whose bodies they were meant to be guarding.
The IOPC findings have heaped further pressure on Dame Cressida, whose future has been thrown into doubt by a series of scandals. Last week, Sadiq Khan put the commissioner on notice, warning her to overhaul the Met urgently or ‘face the consequences’.
In her letter, she urged officers to inform on their colleagues if they suspected them of wrongdoing, telling them ‘standing by is not an option’.
She wrote: ‘Over the last few months we have seen a depressing number of shameful cases that not only threaten public trust, confidence and consent, but also are drowning out the extraordinary achievements of this fantastic police service.’
‘Our reputation is tarnished and people’s confidence in us has fallen. This is serious and it is urgent. To lose public consent would be unthinkable. Action is needed now. Enough is enough.’
Despite all the police scandals surrounding Dick, she has been seamlessly promoted through the ranks, awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Cressida Dick, cut her teeth when she was in overall charge of the police operation which, in a case of ‘misidentification’, followed young innocent electrician Jean Charles de Menezes into Stockwell Station, held him down on the tube and shot seven bullets into his head.
Dave Wiltshire, Secretary of the All Trades Unions Alliance, commented: ‘The police cannot be reformed.
‘The Met police and the other forces must be disbanded! The only way to clear out the rot is for the working class to bring down the Tories by demanding the TUC call a general strike to kick them out, and bring in a workers’ government that will sack Dick and disband the Met, replacing the capitalist state with a workers’ state and socialism.’
