Sue Fish
Former chief of Nottinghamshire police, who called out the “toxic culture of sexism” in UK policing
“The home secretary needs to announce a proper public inquiry into policing, as opposed to a localised look at the Metropolitan police that has no statutory obligations.
Second, policing needs to decide what it wants from its officers in the 21st century. At the moment, the recruitment, selection and promotion processes confirm all the traits that we don’t want to see in policing.
One of the key characteristics for not being corrupt is conscientiousness, or diligence, along with high levels of empathy. Those traits correlate to what might be described as decent people. Yet those virtues are never even considered or measured at any point in an officer’s career.
Currently professional competence trumps everything else, particularly on technical skills such as firearms.
We need to look at what’s rewarded and recognised. At the moment, those who might have had the courage or the desperateness to actually complain about other people are the ones who get sidelined, victimised and penalised. Not the perpetrators.
We also need to totally change the code of conduct. It needs to be modern and needs to be absolutely explicit when people flagrantly abuse their positions of power.
And we almost need a cull of people from policing whose values don’t fit. To find them you could carry out a cultural audit, identify what are good and what are negative behaviours and then start to call them out. The result is that as soon as you join a shift as a man, you’re not automatically enrolled in the WhatsApp group that shows pornography.
I think it would move us much more to a service rather than a force position. And, finally, it’s not just the Met – the issues are much wider than that.”
Unmesh Desai
Member of the London assembly’s police and crime committee
“First, the Met needs to accept it has a problem. Then it needs to set up a detailed action plan with firm timescales of when to deliver. We cannot wait for a review [announced by Cressida Dick less than a week before her resignation] that will take a year, maybe two years.
Fundamentally, the Met also needs the will to undergo root and branch reform. It is a shame because Cressida had the potential to be one of the all-time great reforming commissioners.
But she needed to stop being defensive, to take a step back. Instead of immediately dismissing there was a problem, to accept it.
Look at the history of corruption and failures and surely the starting point should have been to accept the evidence. You cannot address an issue if you don’t accept there’s a problem.
We also need to look at recruitment in the context of recruitment not being enough if you don’t retain people. The Met has a terrible history of not retaining new officers, women officers – we’re losing all that experience.
And we need to look at training for operational practices and the continuous review of section 50 procedures [the right of officers to obtain a person’s name and address], training, along with creating genuine engagement community.
Also, the messaging from the Met is a mess. I’ve said this to Cress [Cressida] myself, told her that the use of social media is not good.
In short, the way forward for the Met is to accept it has issues, to stop being defensive, be bold and go out and take people with it, policing with consent.”
Shabnam Chaudhri
One of the first Asian women to climb the ranks of the Met, becoming detective superintendent. She left in 2019
“The Met needs to immediately focus on providing safe spaces for women and people of colour so they can speak out. It needs to introduce ‘speak out’ groups, creating a platform for people to feel secure when they say what’s on their mind, what’s bothering them.
It also needs to make sure that when people do call out bad behaviour, instead of their line manager reporting the complaint to a senior officer – who tend to accept on face value whatever they are told without talking to the complainant – that the person who has complained gives their own account. That’s where the breakdown is.
It’s about making sure that you provide opportunities for people to complain. People might not necessarily want to speak out, but if you’ve got a group of people saying these are the issues, then they know it’s a problem.
And just because a lot of these [toxic] groups will get disbanded or get deleted doesn’t mean to say that those people are going to stop behaving in a bad way. They’ll do it in a more covert way, which is exactly what happened with the race issues and promotion opportunities – development opportunities. Women and minorities were disregarded and isolated.
I’ve had so many people approach me to say they’re not being supported, they’ve been stopped at the first hurdle when going for a job. For instance, they were going to publish a race review last year, but they still haven’t done it.
As for Cressida, it shows the importance of leadership. Defending your cops is brilliant but you cannot defend the indefensible.”
Dal Babu
Former chief superintendent in the Met
“The first thing the Met needs to do is acknowledge its shortcomings, something Dick refused to do. Then it must start the process of beginning to listen to advisory groups, viewing feedback as a gift and not as a personal attack.
The problem became such that it was not just my Asian and Black friends who expressed concern in the Metropolitan police, but middle- aged white women and men who joined the chorus for a fundamental rethink in how the force reconnects with Londoners and the most diverse capital in the world.
The litany of failings, the cases of racism and bullying, took me back to my first day in policing. I remember walking into Tottenham police station in 1983 and the hostility towards me from my colleagues.
I could count on one hand the officers who did not use the P and N racial slurs. Fast-forward to 2022 and ask: what change has happened ?
Back then, I was told it would take a few decades for the Met to change. Yet four decades on and change hasn’t happened.
Cressida Dick has been at the helm for five years – that’s plenty of time to make changes, but she has failed at so many levels.
I have no idea what her vision even was and allied to the extensive list of failures on her watch, including the optics of corruption that infected the investigation into the death of the private investigator Daniel Morgan, where Dick was personally cited.
I think the removal of Cressida Dick was right and I hope the successor will have a vision and introduce change.”
Loretta Trickett
Criminologist who has worked with police forces to tackle misogyny
“We would do well to remember the Peelian principle from the founder of the Met, namely: ‘The police are the public and the public are the police.’
While effective leadership, including drives to recruit and promote women and ethnic minorities, is essential, it is difficult to achieve when trust is eroded, and these things in themselves are not a panacea for change.
There must be a real commitment to finally root out institutional racism and misogyny and publicly acknowledge the role of police culture in sustaining it.
To achieve this, an urgent priority is to upscale public input, including reframing of what ‘policing success’ looks like, reshaping priorities, evaluating investigation and prosecution practices and, most importantly, holding the police to account.
A new code of policing should be drawn up with independent oversight of disciplinary procedures and swift removal of those who flagrantly breach it. The accountability of MPs to the public must also be strengthened.
The public should not have to wait for resignations and votes of no confidence from those within the policing and political parties.
Accountability to the public they supposedly serve is long overdue. The public deserve more than police officers and MPs who abuse their office by holding them in contempt.
‘Why did it take so long?’ was one of the news headlines after the resignation of Cressida Dick. Why indeed?”
