Next Met Police boss is tasked with making force 'demonstrably more professional': Job advert for Cressida Dick's replacement says they need to bring in 'significant improvements' to 'restore public confidence' (and they'll take home £293,000 salary)
- Scotland Yard have launched recruitment process for next Met Commissioner
- Advert says candidate will need to make force 'demonstrably more professional'
- The end of Dame Cressida Dick's tenure was mired in several controversies]
- Force was criticised for handling of Covid rules, the murder of Sarah Everard, messages between Charing Cross station officers and the Child Q fiasco
- Applications for the role, with a salary of £292,938, must be handed in by May 4
The job advert for the next Metropolitan Police Commissioner has gone live, and the successful candidate will be tasked with making the force 'demonstrably more professional'.
Scotland Yard are giving high-ranking officers from across the country, and possibly abroad, three weeks to submit their applications before being whittled down to find the next boss for 46,000 officers and staff.
Met chief Dame Cressida Dick left the job last week after five years, with her deputy Sir Stephen House temporarily taking the reins until a permanent successor is appointed in the summer.
Potential candidates for the post include former director general of the National Crime Agency Dame Lynne Owens and current Met Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes.
The force has been mired in a series of incidents that have damaged public confidence, including deeply offensive messages shared by a team based at Charing Cross station and the strip-search of a black schoolgirl.
The race is on to replace Dame Cressida Dick (pictured) as head of the Metropolitan Police, with the successful candidate tasked with making the force 'demonstrably more professional'
The advert for the £293,000 role states that it has become 'evident that significant and sustained improvements need to be made within the MPS to restore public confidence and legitimacy in the largest police force in the UK'
Dame Cressida admitted herself that Sarah Everard's rape and murder by then-serving police officer Wayne Couzens had brought 'shame' on the force and damaged public confidence in police.
Britain's most senior officer also failed to get a grip on a culture of racism, sexism and bullying that has haunted Scotland Yard for years.
The advert for her replacement states that it has become 'evident that significant and sustained improvements need to be made within the MPS to restore public confidence and legitimacy in the largest police force in the UK.'
In continues: 'This will require inspirational leadership to deliver a demonstrably more professional police force, that better reflects the diversity of London itself.'
The Met has also been heavily criticised by watchdogs the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) in recent months.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan will be able to advise on the decision regarding the next Met Police Commissioner, but the decision rests with Home Secretary Priti Patel. Pictured: Khan, Dick and Patel at a National Police Memorial Day service
HMICFRS found that the Met's approach to tackling corruption was not fit for purpose, and described storage of evidence by some teams as 'dire' with drugs, jewellery and money going missing and guns not properly secured.
While the IOPC took the unusual step of publishing disturbing messages shared by the Charing Cross team - despite the fact that much of the content was too offensive to print in mainstream news coverage - as it detailed the 'disgraceful' behaviour of officers based in a now disbanded Westminster team between 2016 and 2018.
IOPC regional director Sal Naseem said that the issues raised were 'not isolated or historic'.
Two inquiries, set up in the wake of the murder of Miss Everard, are being held into culture at the Met - an internally-commissioned probe led by Baroness Louise Casey, and a Home Office commissioned inquiry by Dame Elish Angiolini.
'You will lead the service through significant change, role-modelling credible, visible and empowering leadership to address concerns around police conduct and tackling institutional culture.
The force has been mired in a series of incidents that have damaged public confidence, including deeply offensive messages shared by a team based at Charing Cross station and the strip-search of a black schoolgirl (pictured: Protests over Child Q)
The Metropolitan Police commissioner faced calls for her resignation earlier this year after women were arrested at a vigil that was held in memory of Miss Everard
Dame Cressida admitted herself that Sarah Everard 's rape and murder by then-serving police officer Wayne Couzens had brought 'shame' on the force and damaged public confidence in police
In 2019, Dame Cressida's force was widely condemned for its 'light-touch' policing of Extinction Rebellion protests, which blocked several key areas of London
'The successful candidate will be responsible for re-establishing trust and confidence in policing amongst everyone living in London, particularly women and girls and those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.'
The role, considered the most senior police rank in the country, has a salary of £292,938 - almost twice the size of the Prime Minister's packpacket.
Applicants from UK forces must have served at the rank of constable in a UK police force and have held the rank of Assistant Chief Constable, Commander, or higher.
Applications for the position must be submitted by May 4 with no late entrees.
Candidates will then face tests and exercises before going in front of a selection panel led by Home Office Permanent Secretary Matthew Rycroft.
The successful candidate will receive a five-year fixed term appointment, although this can be extended by three years.
Dame Cressida left the police chief role five years to the day that she started, while of her predecessors were ousted before finishing their initial appointment.
Shooting of unarmed Brazilian, Sarah Everard's murder, XR protests, Operation Midland and a culture of racism, sexism and bullying: The charge sheet of failure and incompetence that finally saw Teflon Dame Cressida Dick come unstuck
In the end, it is a wonder she survived in the job so long.
Only last year, her force was officially branded 'institutionally corrupt'. Incredibly, despite such a devastating finding, she did not resign.
Instead 'Teflon' Dame Cressida Dick has made a habit of trotting out humiliating apologies, for both recent and historical blunders, including admitting that the Sarah Everard debacle had brought 'shame' on the Metropolitan Police.
The daughter of two Oxford academics, Dame Cressida, 61, joined the Metropolitan Police in 1983 after graduating from Oxford University with a degree in agriculture and forest sciences. Apart from a six-year spell at Thames Valley Police, she has spent her entire policing career at Scotland Yard.
Her first arrest, which came in her very first beat patrol in London's Soho in 1983, was of a man using a screwdriver to jemmy open the coin box in a telephone kiosk.
Later, at Bramshill Police College in 1995, she was the only woman out of ten officers chosen for fast-track promotion training, but she has been determined that her sex would not define her.
Dame Cressida Dick's shock resignation marks the end of a controversial chapter in the history of the Metropolitan Police
The police chief was one of the first female undergraduates at Oxford's Balliol College in 1979. She always played cricket, football and rowed with 'the boys', saying it never bothered her. Later on, Dame Cressida was given time out to study for a qualification in criminology at Cambridge.
At the Metropolitan Police, she was given responsibility for Operation Trident – which investigated gun and gang crimes – counterterrorism, the 2012 London Olympics, and ended up as the country's principal hostage negotiator.
But since rising from an impressive rookie cop in the 1980s to the very top of British policing at the country's largest force, Dame Cressida has been embroiled in at least seven career-defining disasters.
The wonder is that the first of them didn't spell the end.
Tube death blunder
In July 2005, Dame Cressida was in charge of the operation which saw blameless electrician Jean Charles de Menezes shot dead on a Tube train at Stockwell station in south London after he was mistaken for a terrorist who was under surveillance.
It almost finished her career, and she says she thinks about it 'very often'.
The armed officers believed him to be a fugitive suicide bomber who had escaped after failed attacks in London two weeks after the carnage of the 7/7 bombings.
Dame Cressida was the 'gold commander' on the botched operation, and immediate lethal force – a shot to the head – was supposedly required because any other action risked setting off the suicide jacket.
No officer, including Dame Cressida, faced any charges, and no one was reprimanded.
The Met was found guilty of breaching health and safety laws and putting the public at risk, and was fined £175,000 and ordered to pay £385,000 costs from taxpayer funds. The Met chief was personally exonerated, but the shame of it lingered.
Operation Midland
In 2014, Dame Cressida sanctioned the creation of Operation Midland, a disastrous investigation into spurious VIP child sex abuse allegations that saw completely innocent men pursued by the force.
Five years later, when the embarrassing operation began seriously unravelling, she refused to allow an inquiry into the conduct of officers involved.
This was despite former High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques revealing how officers had used false evidence to obtain a search warrant for the raids. Dame Cressida said that an inquiry would be 'completely improper'.
Dame Cressida was also slammed by the families of victims of VIP paedophile ring fantasist Carl Beech, whose spurious allegations were investigated by police - ruining the lives and reputations of those he accused
While some of her calamities pre-dated her stint as Commissioner, this one sat squarely within her reign. A report in 2020 found the Metropolitan Police was more interested in covering up mistakes than learning from them.
The Hampshire home of the Queen's confidant, Lord Bramall – who was also former head of the Armed Forces – had been invaded by police with search warrants in the early hours on the basis of spurious allegations of abuse by paedophile Carl Beech, a palpable fantasist.
After the Daily Mail exposed him, Beech was jailed. Before he died, D-Day hero Lord Bramall told his son Nick that 'he had never been so mortally wounded, even in battle'.
Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, who received a substantial payout after his life was ruined by the disastrous paedophile inquiry, last night expressed his delight at Dame Cressida's downfall.
He was among seven high-profile victims of the Met – including Baroness Lawrence, whose son Stephen's 1993 murder investigation was botched by racist officers – who last year came together in a Mail interview to accuse Dame Cressida of having 'presided over a culture of incompetence'.
XR protests
In 2019, Dame Cressida's force was widely condemned for its 'light-touch' policing of Extinction Rebellion protests, which blocked several key areas of London.
Under her watch, career eco-activists from XR and its off-shoot Insulate Britain were given free rein to cause mayhem.
Ambulances were stopped from getting through, while businesses and workers were forced to halt their activities.
A low point came when police were filmed asking road-blocking protesters if they needed anything – rather than just arresting them.
In 2019, Dame Cressida's force was widely condemned for its 'light-touch' policing of Extinction Rebellion protests, which blocked several key areas of London
Daniel Morgan
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping condemnation of Dame Cressida came in June of last year when an official report described her force as 'institutionally corrupt'.
And far from blaming the fiasco on a predecessor, it concluded that she had personally placed 'hurdles' in the way of a search for the truth about the death of Daniel Morgan – a private investigator who was brutally murdered in a south London pub car park in 1987.
Daniel Morgan was investigating claims of corruption within the Metropolitan Police when he was murdered in 1987 - and the force failed him and his family ever since. His brother Alastair told the media that Cressida Dick should resign
Dame Cressida was accused of 'obfuscation' for thwarting the Morgan inquiry team's attempts to access sensitive documents, leading to delays that cost the taxpayer millions. The report by Baroness O'Loan found that Scotland Yard was 'institutionally corrupt'.
The Met has never found Mr Morgan's murderer, but there were long-standing allegations of police corruption over the killing and the aftermath.
Mr Morgan's brother Alastair also joined Baroness Lawrence, Harvey Proctor and Lord Bramall in a devastating and unprecedented joint interview with the Daily Mail.
They all signed a letter to the PM demanding Dame Cressida's resignation. Instead she clung on.
Sarah Everard
The brutally horrific murder of Sarah Everard in March last year by serving Met firearms officer Wayne Couzens went from disastrous to worse for Dame Cressida. She faced a clamour to quit after he was exposed as the killer.
It then emerged Couzens had not been vetted properly and Met officers had failed to investigate after he was reported flashing women days before the murder.
But perhaps the worst moment for the Commissioner was her officers' heavy-handed policing of a vigil for the murdered woman at Clapham Common in South London.
The news comes a week after Mr Khan said he was 'not satisfied' with the Met's Commissioner's response to calls for change following a series of scandals including the murder of Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens
The Metropolitan Police commissioner faced calls for her resignation earlier this year after women were arrested at a vigil that was held in memory of Miss Everard
Photographs of protesting women being pinned down by arresting officers who cited Covid restrictions on gatherings were published around the world, sparking condemnation.
When Couzens was convicted, it was dubbed Scotland Yard's 'darkest day'. Dame Cressida stood outside the Old Bailey and humbly admitted the murder had corroded trust in the police and brought 'shame' on her force.
Murder photos
In December last year, two Scotland Yard officers who took photos of the bodies of two murder victims were jailed.
The sisters who died – Nicole Smallman, 27, and 46-year-old Bibaa Henry, were black and there were accusations of racism. 2021 was also the force's worst ever year for teenage killings, with 30 deaths.
Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, who were stabbed to death in Wembley last year
Further mock-ups of messages sent by a male officer during another shocking conversation on WhatsApp
Charing Cross
Earlier this month, details emerged of horrific messages exchanged by officers at Charing Cross police station, by an official watchdog report.
Some 14 officers were investigated as a result, with two found to have a case to answer for gross misconduct.
One was sacked and another resigned before he would have been dismissed. Another two had already left, while in some of the other cases the Independent Office of Police Conduct found 'no further action should be taken'.
Incredibly, nine officers kept their jobs and two were promoted – but their sickening WhatsApp messages exposed an ongoing culture of racism, sexism and bullying.
It appears this sickening episode was the straw which finally broke the back. For, by the end, it was clear that confidence in the police chief had gone.
A 'toxic' culture existed at the Charing Cross Station dating back to 2006, said the former constable, who asked to be referred to by her first name, Liz
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