London police chief Cressida Dick quits

Key Facts

• BBC home affairs correspondent June Kelly said the relationship between the mayor and commissioner has to work - and once Dame Cressida had lost his confidence, and after he was so public about that, things had become toxic.
• The Met's investigation is ongoing The rape, abduction and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met Police officer prompted a wave of criticism and scrutiny Further controversy came when clashes broke out between women and police officers at a vigil in her memory, held under Covid lockdown measures * There were accusations of racism from the mother of two women murdered in a park in Wembley.
• Mina Smallman believes police treated the disappearance and deaths of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry less urgently than if they had been white The disappearance of Richard Okorogheye, a teenager found dead two weeks after his mother reported him missing, is being reviewed by the police watchdog, which will consider whether ethnicity played a role in the way his case was handled And athlete Bianca Williams and her partner believe they were racially profiled when their car was stopped by Met officers in Maida Vale, in 2020.
• The Met apologised Dame Cressida also had to deal with the repercussions from the disastrous Operation Midland, the multimillion-pound investigation which saw detectives duped by false claims of a VIP sex abuse ring made by the paedophile and fantasist Carl Beech A report by an independent panel set up in 2013 into the unsolved murder of Daniel Morgan accused the force of institutional corruption, and found that the then-Assistant Commissioner Dame Cressida had initially refused to grant access to a police internal data system * Further criticism came over the security of Wembley stadium during the final of the Euro 2020 championships, which saw thousands of ticketless fans storm the venue.

Click To Read Full Article