Priti Patel frustrated over Met’s ‘uninterested and defensive’ response to Sarah Everard scrutiny
The home secretary plans to overhaul how police chiefs are chosen after believing Scotland Yard commissioner Dame Cressida Dick “tin-eared”.
The Met police are “absolutely the worst” force in the country, Priti Patel reportedly believes.
Following the murder of Sarah Everard, Patel is determined to tackle what she believes is a misognistic and dysfunctional police culture at the force, The Sunday Times reported.
Scotland Yard has faced scrutiny for allowing killer Wayne Couzens to continue working despite an incident of indecent exposure just days before he kidnapped Everard in March last year.
A senior home office source said Patel has struggled to communicate with Dick since the 33-year-old first went missing during the third lockdown.
Patel met with Everard’s parents,Susan and Jeremy Everard, via Zoom before the marketing executive’s body was found. The home secretary reportedly told the Met commissioner to “cut the crap.”
“She said this case is important and is of national significance,” the source added.
“We have lost count of the number of conversations she had with Cressida and Steve House [the deputy commissioner]. They are not interested. It is institutional. They are very defensive. Policing is very defensive, but the Met are absolutely the worst.”
The home secretary wants to use the national policing board to hold all police forces to account with quarterly reviews. The board allows ministers to express their displeasure with chief constables.
Patel wants to make it easier for talented candidates to join the police and be promoted with haste while also revisiting some of the Met’s previous scandals.
“I don’t think the Met has got their head around this yet in terms of what the Everard case actually means,” the home office source added. “The Met is like a horrible onion. You start peeling back [the layers] and you cry more and more.”
Commissioner Dick has faced calls from women’s campaigners and MPs to resign.