London Mayor Sadiq Khan says he has put Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida “on notice” after evidence emerged of sexist, racist and homophobic behaviour among a group of officers.
Mr Khan had met Dame Cressida about revelations and they spoke for “well over 90 minutes”.
He said the Met “needs to urgently show it has an effective plan for restoring the trust and confidence of Londoners in the police and to drive out the culture of racism, homophobia, bullying and misogyny which clearly still exists within its ranks”.
The mayor does not have the power to appoint or dismiss Met commissioners – that is done by Home Secretary Priti Patel – but he would be consulted.
‘Failure of leadership’
His comments came after Ms Patel told a committee of MPs that a “failure of leadership” had resulted in the offensive messages exchanged by a group of police officers.
She took aim at those at the top of the Metropolitan Police after the messages were published in full on Tuesday, with many too offensive to publish.
The now-disbanded team based in Westminster, mainly at Charing Cross Police Station, sent messages on WhatsApp and Facebook as they joked about rape, domestic violence and violent racism, and used homophobic language and derogatory terms for disabled people.
In an unusual step, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) published the messages after a series of nine investigations into the behaviour of the police officers between 2016 and 2018.
Messages incident ‘not isolated’
Ms Patel told the Commons Home Affairs committee on Wednesday the problem was not isolated and there had been “too many instances where, in policing, we just see the most appalling behaviours”.
Asked by committee chairwoman Diana…
Source : skynews
