MP calls for Dame Cressida to step aside 'so women can trust the police'
Harriet Harman, the Labour MP for Camberwell and Peckham, mother of the House of Commons and chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, has called from Dame Cressida Dick to step down in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard.
In a letter to the Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner, Ms Harman wrote: “Women need to be confident that the police are there to make them safe, not to put them at risk. Women need to be able to trust the police, not to fear them.
“I have written to the Home Secretary to set out a number of actions which must be taken to rebuild the shattered confidence of women in the police service. I think it is not possible for you to lead these necessary actions in the Metropolitan Police. I am sure that you must recognise this, and I ask you to resign to enable these changes to be taken through and for women to be able to have justified confidence in the police.”
In a separate letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel, Ms Harman said urgent action was needed to “rebuild the shattered confidence of women in the police service”. She added: “It is clear that there had been all too many warning signs about him [Wayne Couzens], which had been swept under the carpet. It cannot be rebuilt with the attempt to reassure that this was just, as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner said, one ‘bad’un’.
“Women’s confidence in the police can only be rebuilt with substantive and immediate change.”
She called on the Home Secretary to bring forward changes including:
- Immediately suspending officers from duty where there is an allegation of violence against women.
- Dismissing officers immediately when there is a conviction or admission of such a crime.
- Disciplinary action of gross misconduct, leading to dismissal, for failing to report fellow officers for an allegation of violence against women.
- Scrutinising someone’s attitudes to violence against women, including engaging in violence during sex, as part of vetting of police recruits.
- Fresh checks on officers who transfer between forces for allegations of violence against women.
- Training for all current serving officers with a course to teach them to “examine their own attitudes to violence against women and recognise signs in their colleagues”.
