The head of Scotland Yard had no choice: Thursday evening, Cressida Dick resigned. “It is clear that the Mayor of London no longer has enough confidence in my leadership for me to continue”she said in her press release. “He left me no choice but to resign. » Arrived in 1983 within the Metropolitan Police, the official name of Scotland Yard, she became the first woman appointed at its head in 2017. Cressida Dick, 61, will remain in her post while the Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, finds him a successor.
A legacy of history, the status of Scotland Yard is special: its manager is appointed by the government, but its governance is placed under the responsibility of the Mayor of London. The famous police force was created in 1829 by Home Secretary Robert Peel, who later became Prime Minister, to police the streets of the capital. It was then that the famous bobbies made their appearance in London. But the “Met” (its nickname among the British) has also recovered national powers, and its agents have powers throughout the country. Scotland Yard notably oversees all terrorism-related investigations.
An accumulation of cases for two years
The inexorable deterioration of relations with the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is above all linked to the multiplication of cases over the past two years.
First notorious incident: in June 2020, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, two sisters, were murdered at dusk in a park in north-east London. The police are not launching an investigation into their disappearance. For their family, the reason for this inertia is obvious: because they are black. After their bodies are discovered by the boyfriend of one of them, two police officers take selfies in front of the bodies and share them on a joint group with six of their colleagues. The case ends up leaking.
→ REREAD. UK police officer sentenced to life in prison for murder
Another news item: on March 3, 2021, as she walked home, Sarah Everard, 33, was kidnapped, raped and ultimately killed. The police quickly arrest a policeman, Wayne Couzens, who recognizes the crime. But the trauma is accentuated by the violent arrest of the organizers of the funeral wake, for non-compliance with the rules of confinement. Scotland Yard manager Cressida Dick throws more fuel on the fire when she declares herself “sorry for (his) agents ».
In January, on another note, police officers were found guilty of having used “sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language” against a young woman who was forcibly arrested and undressed for no reason (the facts date from 2013). “Racism, misogyny and sexual violence are trivialized in the police services”accuses the victim, a professor of philosophy. “The system protected and covered them for eight years. »
“Deep cultural issues”
Finisher: 1is February, the British police force condemns in a report the actions of 14 agents of a police station in central London. It sifted through thousands of messages exchanged on social networks, “many of which were highly sexualized, discriminatory or referred to violence”. Direct allusions to rape, homophobic or racist terms or references to the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz have even been noted by the investigators. The Mayor of London immediately reacted: “Anyone who is found responsible for sexism, racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, bullying or harassment does not deserve to wear the Met uniform and must be excluded. »
According to Martin Innes, director of the Institute for Security and Crime Research at Cardiff University, “Britons generally have confidence in the police, although there are periods of deep societal discontent and concern, which is currently the case. These concerns are not just about policing, but rather about issues of equal treatment by institutions. »
In the eyes of the rapporteurs, Scotland Yard must now tackle these “deep cultural issues”. Mayor Sadiq Khan has already decided: in his eyes, the accumulation of cases proves that Cressida Dick was not the right person to impose this necessary cultural change on Scotland Yard.