Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Crisis after crisis: what is going wrong at the Met police?

Beaming broadly as she faced the Prince of Wales in a gilded chamber at St James’s Palace, Cressida Dick was about to achieve another career high. A police officer of 38 years, she appeared exhilarated last Wednesday when receiving a damehood in recognition of her public service.

But storm clouds routinely follow the chief of Scotland Yard, and for Dick, more than most.

Several hours later, at 4.09pm, her force was pressured into releasing a statement defending its policing at Wembley after waves of ticketless supporters attempted to watch the Euro 2020 final on Sunday night.

At 9.15pm came another Met update, this time naming a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed in south London, the latest teenage homicide in a spike that is climbing towards a 13-year high

For seasoned observers of the Met, such daily highs and lows are part and parcel of life as Britain’s most senior police officer. But increasingly, they are noticing something quite new: the extraordinary tenacity of the position’s current incumbent.

As calls for her resignation intensify following a rolling series of scandals including a bungled VIP paedophile ring inquiry, failings surrounding the murder of Sarah Everard and findings that the force is “institutionally corrupt,” the commissioner’s reaction has been to ask for another four-year term.

Few, if any of her predecessors, would survive half of what Dick has endured. Increasingly, one question has become irresistible: how did its embattled chief become so bulletproof?

The answer can be partly found within the vast officers’ mess of the Met’s newish headquarters by the River Thames.

“She’s a good cop, simple as that,” says Ken Marsh of the woman who successfully led Operation Trident, one of the force’s grittiest jobs.

Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents more than 30,000 officers, believes her leadership style quickly seduced much of the rank and file.

“She’s not a shouter like some of her predecessors. She’s calm and that helps a lot. And she’s got our backs,” says Marsh, a veteran of 32 years service.

Her approach, he said, became evident weeks after becoming commissioner, during the chaos that followed the death of Keith Palmer, an unarmed PC who was stabbed when a terrorist attacked the Palace of Westminster in March 2017.

“It’s fine to say [not taking the knee] but have you asked your officers? There was a lot of internal backlash from black officers and I know that because I speak to many of them. You have to show leadership but you also need to demonstrate that you’re human, that you’re the same,” said Chaudhri.

Source: (The guardian)

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