The Sunday Times April 10, 2022 11NEWS
“Oh my God, it’s Cressida!” shouts a
woman, dropping her shopping and
rushing over for a selfie. “Thank you for
all your work,” she gushes. The pattern is
repeated along the bustling Rye Lane in
Peckham, where Dame Cressida Dick has
joined officers on patrol, just as she did in
the 1980s as a young bobby on the beat.
“In a skirt,” she grimaces.
Now she wears the trousers. She is the
boss, and accompanying her is like walk-
ing with a celebrity. Cress, as she likes to
be known, tips her hat respectfully at a
passing hearse and then gets back to the
glad-handing. “I love it,” she says. “My
natural habitat is being on the streets in
uniform.”
Not for much longer. The reason every-
one recognises her is that she is not only
the first female commissioner of Britain’s
biggest police force in its 193-year history
but also its most controversial. On her
watch the Met has become a byword for
scandal, with accusations of racism and
sexism piling onto one another until she
was forced out by Sadiq Khan, the mayor
of the capital.
Last week’s visit to southeast London
was part of a farewell tour that culminates
today, her final day, in Soho, where she
started out 39 years ago. Pushed into an
ignominious departure, she is deter-
mined to cement her legacy. “We’re grow-
ing — we’re bigger, more capable, more
diverse, more scrutinised and better
equipped than ever before. The streets
are safer and I’m proud of that.”
But when a retired black man stops her
and agrees with her observation that
“things have changed so much in
Peckham”, it turns out that in his opinion
things have grown worse. “There’s much
more crime,” he complains, “and so many
problems with young people.”
“Our primary focus is reducing crime
as it affects young people on the streets,”
Dick says. “Last year 800 fewer boys were
stabbed than the year before and lethal
guns were fired less than any time in ten
years — we haven’t had someone shot
dead in this city since last October. We
used to have 30 or 40 a year.” Teenage
homicides in London were, however, at arecord high last year. “The Home Office is
carrying out a review,” she says.
A lot of things in her world seem to be
under review, not least the manner of her
departure. Her resignation in February
was announced hours after she told a
radio show she had “absolutely no inten-
tion of going”. It followed a meeting with
Khan, who said he had lost confidence in
her. Dick, 61, refuses to disclose what hap-
pened in the meeting because a review
has been ordered by Priti Patel. The
review, of all the circumstances of her
exit, will be done by Sir Tom Winsor, the
former chief inspector of constabulary,
and should be complete by summer.
“I agreed on that day to step aside
because I had no other choice,” is all she
will say. “It’s not what I wanted, when I
wanted, how I wanted.”
Among the issues the Winsor review
will look at is what turned into unseemly
wrangling over her golden handshake —
seen by many as generous at £165,727 but
a third of what she might have got. Enti-
tled to two years’ compensation because
it was an involuntary resignation, she
agreed, she says, to the mayor’s first offer
of two months, on top of the statutory six
months, and will donate it — about
£40,000 — to a domestic abuse charity.
From Peckham we move to Brixton,
which had four stabbings at the weekend.
A young constable completing his two-
year probation tells of finding machetes
hidden in hedges and the lift shafts and
roof insulation of blocks of flats. It is not
just knife crime that has clouded Dick’s
almost five years as commissioner. “What
about all the misogyny?” yells a woman
outside the Ritzy cinema.
Of all the recent scandals to hit the Met
nothing was more shocking than the rape
and murder in March last year of Sarah
Everard by PC Wayne Couzens, who had
abducted her in Clapham, south London.
Dick describes it as “the saddest thing that
happened in my service” and says she is
still angry and outraged.
Policing of the subsequent vigil and
protest at Clapham Common came under
fire after clashes erupted and a photo-
graph of a young woman, Patsy Steven-
son, handcuffed on the ground went viral
— to many a defining image of Dick’s ten-
ure. There was, of course, a review: “They
had praise for frontline officers, and just
about no criticism for commanders,” Dick
says. “What they did point out was this
was an extraordinary time, the time of the
pandemic.” She says lockdown guidance
banning mass gatherings was in place,and the Met had urged the public to “stay
at home or find a lawful and safer way to
express your views”. She adds: “We have
reflected on it a lot but I know that image
had a big impact on women.”
I tell her that in Kabul this year I ques-
tioned the Taliban’s spokesman about
their oppression of women, and he pulled
up the picture, saying, “Look at how your
country treats women.” Dick replies:
“None of those people were hurt; none of
them were unlawfully dealt with. We have
more protests in this city than anywhere
in the world, I suspect. Every weekend we
have 12 to 20 protests, and the vast
majority go on without anyone noticing.”
Stevenson is preparing legal action
against the force.
There was outrage, too, when it
emerged officers had taken selfies in 2020
with the bodies of two murdered sisters in
Wembley. Then there were the constables
at Charing Cross police station swapping
WhatsApp messages in which they joked
about raping women and killing black
children. Last month we learnt Hackney
police had strip-searched a black girl sus-
pected (wrongly) of carrying cannabis.
In February Dick emailed her entire
force: “Enough is enough.” It has, she
says, responded. “The Met has risen up.
There is a campaign going on, Not in My
Met — everyone is talking about how
appalled they are. There is nothing a good
cop hates more than a bad cop. But we’re
44,000-strong. We need to root out peo-
ple with those kind of attitudes and behav-
iours and get rid of them.”
She also brought in Baroness Casey of
Blackstock, the straight-talking former
homelessness tsar, to carry out a review of
culture within the Met: “I am sure she will
come up with challenging recommenda-
tions, another thing I wish I was here for.”
One of the officers she greets is working
on a case involving modern-day slavery;
another is from the new predatory offen-
ces unit — an attempt to be more proactive
in dealing with sexual assault. It is clear
the job is massive: aside from dealing with
crime in the capital, the Met has national
responsibilities including terrorism and
the protection of the royal family. Her war
crimes unit is helping the International
Criminal Court on evidence of Russian
atrocities in Ukraine, and police in Lon-
don are helping the National Crime
Agency looking into the Russian diaspora.
Among other things her force is investi-
gating are the parties held in No 10 in
lockdown, for which 20 penalty notices
have already been issued. More, she says,are coming, but she won’t go into details.
Though she won’t say whether Boris and
Carrie Johnson are among them, she sug-
gests those fined should come forward: “I
am not very familiar with the civil service
code, but I can tell you in my service if
someone was to get a fixed-penalty notice
for anything, we would expect them to
tell us. That’s part of their professional
responsibility. But that’s not a matter for
me; it’s a matter for people who regulate
the civil service and politicians.”
For all the criticism, she says there is far
more trust in police than in politicians.
“Trust in the Met remains very high,
whatever anyone says,” she says. “If you
look at surveys, trust in police in London
has held up remarkably well despite
events. It’s around sixtysomething per
cent, higher than for lawyers and civil ser-
vants and about three times higher than
for politicians.”
Her leaving letter criticised the “politi-
cisation of the police”. It is clear to whom
she is referring when she complains: “I
hear people in public life say trust in the
police is shattered or trust and confidence
in police is rock bottom [as Khan has]. It’s
irresponsible; it’s not supported by data.
If you say it over and over, you will influ-
ence for the worst how people see their
police service.”
On sacking her, Khan said the Met had a
“deep cultural problem”, and I wonder if
she accepts that. “I accept we are working
on improving and changing and modern-
ising our culture. We need to root out the
bad people and deal with that head-on,”
she replies.
One of her proudest boasts is that her
force — nearly 34,000 officers and 10,
staff — is larger and more diverse than it
has ever been. Of its officers, 16.4 per cent
(5,508) are from ethnic minorities and
almost 30 per cent (9,956) are women.
This year’s recruits are 23.6 per cent from
minorities and almost 40 per cent female.
Last week she launched a plan to com-
bat violence against women and girls.
While she boasts that homicide detection
rates are their highest, at 95 per cent, it is
very different for rape. Last year fewer
than 2 per cent of cases ended in charges.
She has, she says, “genuinely no idea”
what she will do next. First she will take a
break with her partner, Helen, “in an
undisclosed location for a bit of rest and
reflection”, spend time with family and
enjoy her hobbies of wild swimming and
walking. “There are lots of long walks
with my name on.”
@ChristinaLambCHRISTINA
LAMBThe robots were
introduced in 2009. It is not
safe for people to go into the
vaults for more than 30
minutes because the oxygen
level is kept at 14 per cent,
rather than the 21 per cent in
normal air. If engineers need
to spend any length of time
inside, they are given
breathing apparatus to wear.
The low oxygen content is
designed to protect the books
from risk of fire — strike a
match in the vaults and it will
not light.
About 550 people work onthe Boston Spa site, and plans
are in place to welcome more
members of the public too.
The place has a less than
welcoming air: a collection of
buildings in varying shades of
grey behind a perimeter
fence with a security cabin at
the gate.
But the redeveloped site,
which should be complete by
the end of 2024 and has been
funded by a £95 million
government grant, will be a
transformation. One of the
library’s main sections, the
Urquhart Building, willreceive a complete facelift,
with big windows installed to
make it more pleasant for
both visitors and staff to
spend time in. There will also
be a café and reading rooms.
A new square filled with
plants will make the site more
green — literally and in the
eco sense. Many of the
buildings will be powered by
ground source heat pumps
and solar panels.
To increase capacity on the
library’s shelves, an old
building will be demolished
to make way for one that adds137 miles of storage, enough
to last until the middle of the
century. A viewing gallery
with a plate-glass window will
separate the public from the
deoxygenated air while
allowing them to see the
robots at work.
The new storage building
will be tall, but not as tall as
the British Library would
have liked. “There’s a
planning regulation that says
we can’t exceed the height of
the parish church in Walton
village,” Bruce said.
@HannahAlOthmanOn an industrial estate in
West Yorkshire, robots speed
along rows of towering
storage, picking boxes from
shelves. This may look like an
Amazon warehouse, but the
unmistakable smell of old
parchment gives away the
fact that it is something else
entirely — the British
Library’s main storehouse.
“Without us intending to,
it’s been a bit of a secret,” said
Alasdair Bruce, a manager at
the British Library, which
keeps a copy of every single
book, newspaper and journal
that is published in the UK.
While about a quarter of its
170 million items are in
London, the rest are held in
the village of Boston Spa,
near Wetherby. It is easy to
understand why — storage in
London costs £26 a metre,
compared with £4 a metre in
Yorkshire.
Yet despite its 373 miles of
shelving, even the Boston Spa
site is running out of space.
Within as little as two years,
the library’s shelves could be
full. If the items in its
collection were lined up, they
would reach from London to
Edinburgh.
Bruce said: “There’s a
finite amount of storage space
that we have for all this, but
an infinite amount of
material.”
The solution is a huge
redevelopment of theHannah Al-OthmanMet chief gives two months’ pay to
charity — but is unrepentant over vigil
As Cressida Dick prepares to leave, she admits the Everard protest images had a ‘big impact on women’ but still defends her officers
SUNDAY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILLI agreed
to step
aside
because
I had no
other
choiceDame Cressida Dick
on her farewell tour.
She has faced huge
criticism over the
image, above, of
Patsy Stevenson at
Sarah Everard’s vigillorries that take hundreds of
items 200 miles down the A
every day.
An online order sends a
request directly to a robot
that will locate the item, pick
it out and deliver it to staff
who work at the library,
ready for them to send down
south or keep for a reader at
the Yorkshire site. The robots
keep track of the most
requested items, which are
typically the newer ones, and
deposit them back onto the
nearest shelves so they have
less far to travel next time.Amazon’s new
warehouse? No,
the Yorkshire
branch of the
British Library,
and it’s going to
get even bigger
Yorkshire site, which will not
only increase capacity but
also make it more
environmentally friendly.
It has no option but to
expand. An act of parliament
means that publishers are
required by law to provide a
copy of every work they
publish in the UK to the
British Library, an obligation
that has existed in some form
in English law since 1662.
Since 2013 regulations
expanded to include digital as
well as print publications.
It receives about 300,
books annually — or, in British
Library terms, “about five
miles every single year”.
Even some self-published
books are kept here. If
something is sent into the
library, staff will catalogue it
and store it, ready for when it
is requested by academics,
amateur historians, students,
curious readers — or nobody.
While the oldest, rarest
and most priceless material,
such as Magna Carta and the
oldest British newspaper,
published in 1621, is kept
under lock and key at the
British Library in St Pancras,
most of the rest of the
collection is kept in
Yorkshire.
When readers put in an
online request for a book at
St Pancras, most do not
realise why there is a 48-hour
wait. Items need to be dug
out of storage in Yorkshire
and loaded onto one of theANDREW MCCAREN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES500
Robots are used to find
items requested by readersMiles of shelving in
Yorkshire and London
put together, the same
as a return trip to the
International Space Station