More insult to injury.
Well, no one can accuse the Met of being inconsistent. A couple of months after the two firearms who shot John Charles de Menezes were allowed back onto active duty, despite the force still considering whether they should face disciplinary charges, Cressida Dick, the woman in charge of the anti-terrorism operation on the morning of July the 22nd, has been promoted to deputy assistant commissioner.
That the force seems to think it fine that the woman who is probably the most responsible for the death of de Menezes is promotion material pretty much sums up the entire police attitude to what happened on that day. The Met has treated the public, the de Menezes family and de Menezes himself with the upmost contempt. The lies and smears which emerged from the beginning, with de Menezes accused of jumping the barrier, acting "suspiciously" and having an expired visa, not to mention the accusations of rape which were disproved were all part of a campaign to play down the significance of what one police source later described as a "complete and utter fuck-up."
We are still to receive the IPCC report in full, but the parts of it that have leaked are damning enough. I speculated when the News of the Screws obtained a copy that Dick's career was over, as it concluded that her use of words had contributed to de Menezes being shot dead rather than being simply arrested. Dick maintains that she wanted the officers to do the latter, but a colleague claims she also added "at all costs" to her instruction. I could not have been more wrong.
The promotion of Dick also furthers the stranglehold that Sir Ian Blair now has over the Met. They worked together first in the Thames Valley force, both attended Oxford, and both believe in "police modernisation". That the modernisation they believe in seems to be rather similar to the bad old days of lying, covering up and ignoring public discontent doesn't seem to bother Ken Livingstone, whose support for Blair has helped him keep the job.
Most of all though, Dick's rise in the ranks tells us what we already knew: that the police don't really care if something similar happens again. Their distaste for even the slap on the wrist that might be handed down by a court on health and safety grounds has been ever abundant in their attempts to stop the case before it even starts. That the force doesn't even mind the bad publicity that comes from their bewildering decisions, taken before anything has been properly settled means that all the talk of the Met reforming itself should be taken for what it is: self-serving oleaginous sophistry.
| Permalink
