Imagine the shame you would feel if you were Cressida Dick now.

[Sep200024]

It’s just unfathomable.

I’ve held senior roles with something of a weight of responsibility on my shoulders before. It’s not easy.

But to have it made so public that you are responsible for such a vast level of incompetence in such a vital public service organisation must be crippling.

To know the suffering, the injustices, and the lives that have been lost because of your policies and your decisions.

I don’t know how she lives with herself.

@Thesharkradar

I'm not sure what you're saying - that the worst of humanity is black and gay?

Or that only people who are racist and homophobic can deal with evil?

No, I don't believe that for one moment.

CantFindTheBeat
I know someone in his 50s who has just retired from a senior position in the Met.

He is openly racist and homophobic, as are a number of his police friends who I met at various events before I called him out and broke ties.

I'm not condoning him at all, but when you consider that the police and other emergency services have to work very closely with the worst aspects of human nature, have to deal with things that would leave the rest of us traumatised...
maybe only a certain type of personality can cope with that?
Or maybe most people become hardened and damaged by what happens in the emergency services?
I don't know what the answer is 🤷

The point is that people who are inclined to be useless /racist /homophobic or whatever, when they rise to the level of appointing subordinates, appoint people just like them. And so it carries on. I've met some coppers who couldn't string a sentence together, just obeyed orders and were incapable of thinking if they were behaving appropriately. Add to that the culture of it being a club for boys and there the problems start and finish. Yes, I did work for the police and it really was bad. Not the Met, even my colleagues thought the Met were beyond redemption and that was 40 years ago.

This is so offensive it's unreal. My best friend is an inspector in Surrey police. He is an absolutely one of the best human beings on the planet and exactly the sort of person you would want in the police force. I've no idea about the Met in particular. But logic would tell you all police forces and all police officers are not the same.

I’ve always wondered the same. Completely useless. They must just promote anyone

Oh good, Not All Coppers Are Like That 👍

He is an absolutely one of the best human beings on the planet and exactly the sort of person you would want in the police force.

meh. He is tarred by the same brush. If he's an inspector he should be instrumental in setting the tone for his team's culture and how they are around each other and the public. That is his job.

I have no doubt that there are - even in the met - individual officers who are beyond reproach. There are too many who are absolute racist misogynist fuckers and they need to go. There are also far far far too many who watch as these things happen without opening their beaks. And it is these ones, the ones who don't report, don't call out the racists (for whatever reason, i accept that it isn't easy which is why there are anonymous whistleblowing opportunities) who have let it get this far. Not the absolute fuckers - because we will always have them - not the really good ones, the middle ones who just let it all slide.

and any police officer who has a problem with us saying we don't trust them? self-reflection, mate, self-reflection.

What's your point exactly? They aren't. The Met clearly has deep-rooted issues. That does not mean every police officer and every police force in the country are institutionally racist and sexist.

But paramedics and firemen generally aren’t like that. Firemen in particular are just spectacularly nice to the general public
The police are law enforcement, they are enforcing the law as such they have more power than other emergency services, power corrupts therefore the police are more liable to become corrupted.
Also they are interfacing in a personal way with criminality and criminals, some police officers will have been attracted to the job because they have a penchant for abusing power, more likely to cross the line into criminality.

Isn't it more that not many people want to do the job so they have to pick from the pool that's available, maybe they can't make silk purses out of those sows ears?

She is shameless, and should never have held the position she did, in the first place. She refused to admit to the appalling cultures within the Met. Absolutely useless.

Try living in South Yorkshire, we have Orgreave, Hillsborough & Rotherham abuse scandals on the hands of our police force. A police force who lied about all three & have the deaths of 97 people on their watch.

yeah, I'm from Sheffield. Frankly i don't trust the police as far as i could throw them.

This is such a MN thread.

For anyone who's not white, and who has a teenaged non-white son (and increasingly these days, daughter) living in London, this "news" isn't even worth reading to the end of. Tell us something new. All this is going to do is fan the flames, just like after Stephen Lawrence. The Met think they're heroes and feel like victims. That everyone who's not white and male and straight is scum and ripe for the picking. It's going to get a lot worse now. They're mad.

It's top to bottom, and deeply ingrained. It's their culture. You can't change that. Even if you break it all up and start again, where are you going to get the people from? It'll be all the same faces wearing new uniforms and carrying new titles. This is it for Britain's capital.

I agree with @Partyandbullshit

There's a UK police page on Reddit. The comments on there are very telling. Lots of denial. Lots of "well I never saw any". But mostly "oh look the media are focusing on the racism / homophobia and not the bits of the report that we agree with about training etc".

It's a culture that is ingrained and nothing will change until the entire institution is broken apart.

People must join the police for all kinds of reasons, good and bad. So you have officers who are hard-working, fair and dedicated to tackling crime and also officers who enjoy having power over others for all the wrong reasons.

It sounds as though the Met isn’t doing enough to root out the bad apples, and that far too many incidences of police misconduct are being systematically covered up.

I am not sure what to make of Ms Dick

Whether she is

1. completely inept and was promoted waaaay beyond her ability to be used as a political stooge or

2. a complete sociopath

Why must there be someone to blame - C Dick, the Gov. This is much of the problem - always someone else to blame
-No the ones to blame are the sexist/racist-/ whatever so and sos in the Met -just weed them out and fire them - it’s not that hard and it’s not someone else’s fault.

Well, Einstein, if you don't see any of the heirarchy to blame for the culture in the organisation - who is going to fire anyone?

Of course the head of the organisation is to blame when the whole thing is riddled with racism and misogyny

There's huge amounts of misogyny in the fire service @Saschka . Just Google ITV And Dorset and Wiltshire fire. And it's not just them - LFB has a serious issue too.

It's a male thing I think - it's been brought out in policing due to the public rightly complaining about some officers' behaviour, but ask yourself when did you last interact with the fire service? Very few people do unless you're unlucky enough to be in a fire or a car crash. And they're great on an operational call out - but the way women and minorities get treated in there is awful.

Specifically to Cressida, I think she had to work so hard to get loyalty from a team that hated having a woman in charge it meant she didn't actually deliver very much.

I haven't RTFT but this.

Blaming one woman for all the faults of predatory, racist, misogynistic men is quite the leap.

She's shit. I get it. But the actual direct harm is being done by men.

True.

I get it. We can’t blame one woman for everything wrong in toxic male culture.

Someone has to be accountable though. That is what she was paid gargantuan amounts of money for. And she didn’t deliver.

Nobody is blaming her alone, or blaming her for being a woman. She should have been fired over the de Menezes thing.

She is being regarded in the same way the male who was at the head of it when the 1999 report came out highlighting the institutional racism. In that respect she's getting equal treatment.

I think the comments would be the same if the commissioner had been a man.