Nevertheless the Dick heading up the London Metropolitan Police, Dame Cressida, was forced to undergo the snip after the Mayor of London and erstwhile human rights lawyer, Sadiq Khan, announced a loss of confidence in the British capital's cop supremo. Why he ever had any confidence remains a mystery to be tackled another time.
While the mayor does not have the power to actually fire the Met Commissioner, British Home Secretaries are said to observe the convention that when the mayor of London loses confidence then the cut has to be made. It is the sort of thing governments do, much like when Louis XVI objected to the Bishop of Autun's plan to nominate Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienneas as Archbishop of Paris: "The Archbishop of Paris should at least believe in God". Dick, it seems, believed in police but not necessarily in policing if it is not too fine a distinction to make.
Some might have thought that after the roasting the Met took over the 1993 white racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence - with the 1999 Macpherson Report finding the force to be institutionally racist – would have led to it upping its game. Not so. The only thing that appears to have gone up is the middle finger.
If you ask me whether I think anybody did anything wrong or unreasonable on the operation, I don’t think they did.
When women took to the streets to oppose violence' against women following the Sarah Everard rape and murder, by a serving Met officer, the force used violence to remove them from Clapham Common. Dick defended the Met actions and threatened to continue in her role, dismissing the concerns of her critics:
I don't think anybody who was not in the operation can actually pass a detailed comment on the rightness and wrongness . . .
The handling of Operation Midland – an investigation into child abuse by British political establishment figures instigated by a fantasist brought more controversy to her door.
When two black sisters were murdered in a London park, Met indifference to concerns about their absence prompted a furious response from their family. Their mother accused the force of “racial profiling, misogyny or classism” and expressed the view that Dick's “job was essentially to protect the brand”.
In June 21 Dick was heavily criticised by an independent panel headed by Baroness O'Loan for obstructing an investigation into the 1987 murder of a private detective. The report also said that:
Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation's public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit and constitutes a form of institutional corruption.
After a botched Met security operation that led to fans storming Wembley stadium during the Euro soccer finals, Dick was again displaying the tone deaf syndrome she was accused of suffering from:
There’s an awful lot of inaccurate speculation about what happened at the moment. I’m very proud of my officers and the command team.
Last month Dick was again drawing flak for her force's "apparent hesitation" to investigate the Downing Street parties.
Finally, the Charing Cross police station text scandal landed the Met in it yet again, where this time an officer who was disciplined for failing to report misogynist and racist messages was subsequently promoted. A day before she was shown the door, Dick was insistent that her leadership was fine and she would remain at her desk.
After such a calamitous reign, the Mayor of London had enough and turned his back on the cop against whom:
allegations relating to an unholy trinity of dishonesty, prejudice and incompetence dogged the Met for almost all of her tenure.
Having run out of metaphorical condoms for cover, Dick was left short of protection. To have carried on as Met chief would have prompted indignant allegations of indecent exposure.
⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.
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