Labour’s Harriet Harman has called for Cressida Dick to resign as chief of the Metropolitan Police after Wayne Couzens was sentenced to a whole-life order for the murder, rape and kidnapping of Sarah Everard. He is the first police officer to receive such a sentence. In a letter to the Commissioner, Harman writes that ‘women’s confidence in the police will have been shattered’ by the case and that it is ‘not possible for you [Dick] to lead’ the changes necessary in the force following this case.
It is significant that Harman has called for Dick to go. She is not a bandwagon politician and does not tend to call for scalps, even in high-profile cases such as this. But she, like many of her colleagues, feels that there is a systemic problem in the Metropolitan Police and that the force is simply not facing up to the implications of the case.
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