Ricky Waumsley, whose partner Daniel Whitworth was murdered by serial killer Stephen Port has welcomed Dame Cressida Dick’s resignation.
Dame Cressida quit as Metropolitan Police Commissioner on Thursday after losing the support of London Mayor Sadiq Khan over her plan to reform the force following a string of scandals and accusations of a toxic working culture.
Mr Waumsley told the PA news agency his first thought when he heard the news was “about time” and that he hoped more resignations would follow.
“She had clung on to that position so tight when, all around her, the officers she was in charge of have been racist, homophobic and sexist,” he said.
This will be a small justice for the four victims and I hope more resignations within the Met police will come.
Mr Waumsley had called for her to quit in December after an inquest jury found police failures had likely contributed to the deaths of Mr Whitworth and those of two more of Port’s victims.
Port, known as the Grindr Killer, drugged, raped and killed four men between June 2014 and September 2015 in Barking, east London, and sexually assaulted more than a dozen others.
The inquests into the four deaths revealed that officers failed to carry out basic evidence gathering such as examining Port’s laptop, testing DNA on bedsheets on which two of the bodies were found, and checking the veracity of a fake suicide note found with Mr Whitworth’s body.
Seventeen officers were investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and nine were found to have performance failings.
None of the nine were disciplined or lost their jobs, and five had been promoted.
Last year, Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball issued an apology on behalf of the Met but rejected the families’ claim that homophobia played a part.
She said: “We don’t see institutional homophobia. We don’t see homophobia on the part of our officers. We do see all sorts of errors in the investigation, which came together in a truly dreadful way.”
Mr Waumsley said: “When I was let down by the Met police because of their blatant homophobia towards the four victims that Stephen Port killed, and the inquest concluded that the Met failures ‘probably’ contributed to their deaths, I held Cressida accountable for these failures and made a statement that she should ‘resign with immediate effect’. So I am glad.
“This will be a small justice for the four victims and I hope more resignations within the Met police will come.”
