Reacting to the news of Cressida Dick's resignation yesterday, Harriet Wistrich, director of Centre for Women's Justice, has released the following comment:
“We have been deluged with a series of stories about the metropolitan police revealing shocking levels of sexual violence and abuse by police officers. The mounting evidence of a police service littered with appalling misconduct should have been met with a public determination to root it out. There were far too many stories of officers accused of violence and abuse still in their jobs and of whistle-blowers victimised instead of listened too. Cressida Dick’s response to these series of stories has been wholly inadequate and her description of Wayne Couzens as a ‘wrong un’ meaningless next to the mounting evidence of multiple allegations of abuse and policing failures to tackle violence against women and racism.
As solicitor for the de Menezes family, I watched as Cressida Dick, in charge of the operation which led to the shooting of a wholly innocent man, survived and thrived. She rose to the top of the Met, only to preside over an institution where misogynists, racists and homophobes can hold on to their jobs when they are meant to be tackling crime. The problem with Cressida as the first female to rise to the top of the most difficult job in policing, is that in order to do so she had to put loyalty to her officers above all else.
Any future leader of the Met must be able to listen to victims and be prepared to tackle the culture of misogyny and racism that pervades the underbelly of Met policing. In the meantime, Centre for Women’s justice will continue in our judicial review bid to ensure that the inquiry announced by the Home Secretary into failings associated with the murder of Sarah Everard, is put onto a statutory footing and broadened in scope to ensure it can identify systemic failings and recommend meaningful institutional change”
Centre for Women’s Justice, have launched a CrowdJustice campaign to raise funds to pursue legal action against the Home Secretary's decisions around the Angiolini Inquiry.
The full application for a judicial review will be lodged imminently. Their calls for a wider statutory inquiry are supported by more than 20 national organisations specialising in violence against women in girls.