The mayor of London’s statement on the resignation of Cressida Dick made it clear: a toxic culture within the police, including a persistent seam of misogyny, played a big role in the Metropolitan police commissioner’s downfall.
It is remarkable that the outrage that consumed the force after the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer Wayne Couzens in March last year, was only one scandal among many to have shaken women’s faith that the service was there to protect them.
While Dick had little control over the events that engulfed her, she led a series of missteps that further eroded confidence in her leadership, particularly among women.
In the days that followed Everard’s death the Met was criticised for banning a peaceful vigil in her honour, and when a vigil went ahead without their blessing, the image of a woman being held down by officers was beamed across television screens.
“A rotten culture stems from rotten leadership – so it’s good news that she has finally resigned,” said Anna Birley, of Reclaim These Streets who organised the original vigil.
Many who worked with Dick praised her work ethic and intelligence, but she never seemed to fully acknowledge the scale of misogyny that critics insisted ran through her force.
In June, on the day that one of her officers pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and rape of Everard, Dick badly missed the mark in a speech to the Women’s Institute, causing anger by seeming to minimise the problem, saying the force had the occasional “bad ’un” within its ranks.
In December, she had to apologise again when two Met officers were jailed after taking pictures of two sisters, Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, found stabbed to death in June 2020.
Their mother, Mina Smallman, who said racism was a factor in the Met’s initial bungling of the search for her daughters, described the officers actions as a betrayal of “catastrophic proportion”.
“Those police officers felt so safe, so untouchable, that they felt they would take photographs with our murdered daughters,” she said.
And then, as a new year started, Dick’s leadership was struck by another blow. A fiercely critical report by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) unveiled shocking details of officers sharing messages about hitting and raping women, as well as the deaths of black babies and the Holocaust. “You ever slapped your missus? It makes them love you more,” wrote one. “They are biologically programmed to like that shit.” The Met’s response? “We do not believe there is a culture of misogyny in the Met.”
The IOPC disagreed, saying: “We believe these incidents are not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’.”
Dick was the first female and first openly homosexual officer to lead the country’s biggest force, but Khan made it clear that he had no confidence she would be the person to “root out the racism, sexism, homophobia, bullying, discrimination and misogyny that still exist” in the Met.
Harriet Wistrich, director of the Centre for Women’s Justice, said: “The problem with Cressida as the first female to rise to the top of the most difficult job in policing, is that in order to do so she had to put loyalty to her officers above all else.”
She added that after “mounting evidence of a police service littered with appalling misconduct”, there were too many officers accused of violence and abuse still in their jobs and of whistleblowers victimised instead of listened too. “Cressida Dick’s response to these series of stories has been wholly inadequate.”
So, what now? An independent review of culture and standards in the Met by Lady Louise Casey, will focus on the force’s vetting, recruitment and training procedures. At the same time an independent inquiry chaired by Dame Elish Angiolini QC will look at Couzens’ actions during his career, and whether any red flags were missed or allegations made against him mishandled.
Whoever takes on this role at a tumultuous time for the Met will know that more apologies are likely to be needed. Ruth Davison, the CEO of the domestic abuse charity Refuge, said on Thursday: “One resignation at the top doesn’t mean the police have solved their misogyny problem.”
