From the moment the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, put Dame Cressida Dick on probation as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, her position was untenable.
It was perhaps harsh to place her in such a humiliating position – the last time she was on probation was as a new recruit on the beat four decades ago. Yet Mayor Khan will certainly have made his disquiet perfectly clear to her in private, and over a considerable period of time.
The latest scandal, the discovery of some sort of racist, sexist and homophobic club at Charing Cross police station, in the very centre of the capital, was only the latest to outrage the mayor and Londoners alike. She was probably fortunate, before her time as commissioner and as a senior officer, to survive the serious misjudgements that led to the killing of Jean-Charles de Menezes. In more recent times she has had to weather the mishandling of the Stephen Port murders, the neglect of the murder of Daniel Morgan, the two officers caught photographing and disrespecting the memory of two murdered sisters, the heavy-handed policing of the Sarah Everard vigil and protests, and much else.
