It’s been a pretty awful year for the Metropolitan Police. Having been forced to apologise for Wayne Couzens’ murder of Sarah Everard in July, forced to apologise for their officers taking pictures of two murdered sisters in October and forced to apologise for failing Stephen Port’s victims in November, this week the Met was forced to apologise for officers sending ‘disgraceful’ abusive messages at Charing Cross police station. And let’s not forget the Met’s cack-handed last-minute intervention into Sue Gray’s inquiry which will now drag the partygate affair for weeks to come.
In such circumstances it’s perhaps unsurprising that the scandal-ridden Met commissioner Cressida Dick sometimes thinks it’s time to pack it in. For Mr S has learned that last month, just a week before she U-turned to announce the Met would be launching a criminal investigation into the parties, Dick found time to spend around an hour talking to pupils at Westminster School, where fees cost up to £43,272 per year. For on 18 January, she spoke to dozens of students from Westminster and other local schools about careers in policing and the Met’s culture. Mr S understands that most of the questions were pre-submitted, and instead of hard-hitting queries about her record in charge, most of what she spoke was in the banalities of ‘public service’ language.
However, one pupil wriggled through and asked whether anything had ever made her consider her position and, if so, what would be serious enough for her to resign. Dick replied:
Yes, I think every few weeks, every few months throughout my commissionership, I have sat down and reviewed with myself whether I’m the right person to carry on. I just think that’s good practice. I think, the implicit thing in your question was, has there been one thing where I‘ve gone away and thought “Oh dear, I better resign”, or had a very serious conversation about “is now the time to resign?” The answer to that is no, I haven’t. But I absolutely listen to what’s out there.
We live at the moment in what I call the age of outrage: a time where people can get very whipped up or fevered about lots of things, and where it’s very, very noisy, but the trick, I think, as any senior leader is — and I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant — the trick is to be humble but to be personally confident. And I thank my mum and my school for helping me to be reasonably personally confident. To have really good antennae, really good whiskers, nose, ears, touch, and listen all the time to what’s going on out there.
Evidently, Dick’s ears could do with a check-up, given the accident list that is her CV. When asked about a culture of abuse in the Met, Dick’s answer suggested a certain inevitability about the whole thing:
You could argue that policing is a profession that may attract exactly the wrong people. A little bit like they always say that if you want to be a fast jet pilot, you shouldn’t be a fast jet pilot. You know if you get a kick out of the power, if you’re attracted to the wrong things, if you don’t have a very strong sense of moral compass, all these things are very important in a police officer. It’s a difficult job. It’s one that bashes you about a bit, physically, psychologically, in all sorts of other ways. We need strong, resilient people.
Well, that’s certainly one way of putting it. Comments about what Dick said after the talk at a drinks reception were listed on Westminster School’s Instagram picture underneath an image of the Met chief in conversation. However two days after Mr S went to the Met to ask whether students’ claims about what she said there were accurate, Westminster chose to remove the picture – along with the accompanying comments. How mysterious!
Asked whether it was true that Dick had told students afterwards about her reluctance to open the partygate investigation on the grounds it would corrode public trust in politicians, a Met spokesperson said that ‘We don’t recognise what you put to us.’ So that’s that, then.
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