The Metropolitan Police has fallen far below the standards we expect

From the moment the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, put Dame Cressida Dick on probation as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, her position was untenable.

It was perhaps harsh to place her in such a humiliating position – the last time she was on probation was as a new recruit on the beat four decades ago. Yet Mayor Khan will certainly have made his disquiet perfectly clear to her in private, and over a considerable period of time.

The latest scandal, the discovery of some sort of racist, sexist and homophobic club at Charing Cross police station, in the very centre of the capital, was only the latest to outrage the mayor and Londoners alike. She was probably fortunate, before her time as commissioner and as a senior officer, to survive the serious misjudgements that led to the killing of Jean-Charles de Menezes. In more recent times she has had to weather the mishandling of the Stephen Port murders, the neglect of the murder of Daniel Morgan, the two officers caught photographing and disrespecting the memory of two murdered sisters, the heavy-handed policing of the Sarah Everard vigil and protests, and much else.

Dame Cressida seems to lack an empathetic quality that might have saved her the scorn of victims’ families. Her loyalty to her officers, a laudable quality in a leader, shaded into a tendency to downplay legitimate concerns. For some reason she, or her force, were far too slow to take action over the possible breach of lockdown rules in Downing Street. Cressida Dick’s last service will be to see that through before her successor takes charge.

Over the years her force has been called “institutionally racist” and, more recently, “institutionally corrupt”. Rather than accepting such criticisms and acting on them, Dame Cressida gave the impression that she thought her job was to defy the critics. When one of those critics is the mayor of London, then it’s really not worth the effort. Although the timing was a surprise, there wasn’t much real chance of a rapprochement with Mayor Khan.

On top of these cause celebres, Londoners are also fed up with absurd gang warfare and knife crime. Policing any great city is never easy, and rarely can any police chief declare “victory”. Such is the nature of crime, indeed, that it is a war without end.

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Dame Cressida had some successes, and her officers are brave and dedicated, but the public is rightly concerned that too many of them fall below the standards of the best and what they have a right to expect. That goes for the leadership of the force as well.

The choice of the next commissioner is obviously critical for Londoners, but, because of the Met’s national role and influence, it matters to the country as a whole. If reform is needed, as it has been in difficult times before, then it might be best to encourage applicants from outside London. That has worked in the past when corruption was rife in the force up to and including the most serious ranks. There never was a golden age when there wasn’t collusion with criminals, blind eyes, backhanders and wickedly discriminatory policing, and many would rightly claim that the Met is in better, cleaner shape than it was in the 1970s or 1980s, but that is not good enough.

The next commissioner will have as tough a start as any in the long history of the Metropolitan Police service.