Cressida Dick goes amid new revelations of vile texts among Met Police

Sacked Cressida Dick and home secretary Priti Patel (Picture: Flickr/ Number 10)

Cressida Dick stepped down as chief of the Metropolitan Police on the same weekend that more disgraceful WhatsApp messages between cops were revealed.

Dick resigned in February but was set to continue the role until a replacement could be found. But last month, after clashes over the terms of her leave with London mayor Sadiq Khan, Dick announced she would leave in April.

She was finally forced out over the lack of action against a group of Met Police officers that shared racist, sexist and homophobic messages on WhatsApp. Dick will now take annual leave until her last day of employment on 24 April and pocket a £166,000 severance payment.

Her last comments, made last Friday, were to warn against “politicisation of policing”. She called for “operational independence from local and central government”.

But now new messages have surfaced in a group chat of Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection branch officers—the same Met Police unit Wayne Couzens was part of. Couzens raped and murdered Sarah Everard last year while pretending to be an on-duty officer.

Socialist Worker has already revealed emails between Met Police cops in the Specialist Operations units. Now the Daily Mirror has uncovered more WhatsApp messages that show cops celebrating the murder of George Floyd, who was killed by US police in May 2020.

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Messages included a photograph of Floyd’s dying moments with the words “Pink Floyd” as cop Derek Chauvin pushed his knee into his head. Another was of a T-shirt of Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson with a bullet hole in her head saying, “Black Lives Splatter”. Johnson was shot in Peckham, south London, last year. Others mocked in the group were Labour MP Diane Abbott and Everard, days after Couzens’ arrest. The group was created in 2018, and members had to be invited by current and former Met Police officers.