A few weeks ago it looked as if the Home Office was going to defy the wishes of Greater London’s awful and incompetent Mayor Sadiq Khan and not give a contract extension to the Metropolitan Police’s equally awful and incompetent police commissioner Cressida Dick. At the time the rumours were that the Home Office wanted to take more interest in how London is policed and replace her with someone more to the Home Office’s liking.

Sadly that does not look to be the case. According to a report by Sky News, the Home Office can’t seem to find a suitable candidate to replace Dick and may well cave give her a two year extension to her contract.

If the story from Sky is true and that Londoners will continue to be saddled by this awful politically biased police chief then it is indeed bad news. London needed better than Sadiq Khan’s uniformed pet to deal with London’s crime and disorder problems.

It’s looking as if Londoner’s cries for a better police chief and one who is not inclined to act as Dick has done in allowing officers to kneel for the Marxist BLM thugs or diverting officers from real crime into monitoring Twitter for ‘offence’, could well be ignored. However, criticism of the idea of reappointing Dick for a two year contract extension is not merely coming from ordinary Londoners or people such as myself who want to see police officers deal with the sort of crime that afflicts ordinary people and not get bogged down in left wing politics. Criticism of this possible decision is also coming from some quite high profile individuals.

The Sky article that speaks about the possibility that Dick might get a contract extension said that a number of public figures have said that this would be a bad idea. Each of these individuals has different motivation for their dislike of Dick, but they are all united in their belief that she should not be reappointed.

Sky News said:

A group of high-profile victims of police corruption, malpractice and incompetence are urging Boris Johnson not to extend the contract of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick.

The mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence is one of the signatories of an open letter calling on Mr Johnson to replace Dame Cressida and accusing her of “presiding over a culture of incompetence and cover-up”.

The letter – shared with the Daily Mail and written by authors including Baroness Doreen Lawrence and Lady Diana Brittan – says the 60-year-old “must be properly investigated for her conduct”, along with her “predecessors and those in her inner circle, who she appointed and who have questions to answer”.

Dame Cressida Dick has been linked to an awful lot of scandal not just during her time as Commissioner but throughout her career. Few will forget or even forgive her involvement in the killing of an innocent Brazilian electrician at Stockwell who was mistaken for an Islamic terrorist. But that is not the end of the stories of Dick’s mismanagement of the Met. The Met splurged untold amounts of resources on Operation Midland that targeted famous figures such as Lord Bramall the military hero, former politicians Lord Brittain and Harvey Proctor along with DJ Paul Gambaccini and accused them of child abuse. The Met based Operation Midland on the claims of a fantasist child abuser named Carl Beech and failed to carry out many of the sort of due diligence checking on the claims by Beech that they should have done. Although Operation Midland mostly took place under the leadership of the previous Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, there are concerns that Cressida Dick did not properly put into place recommendations made in the aftermath of Operation Midland.

Under Cressida Dick’s watch, London’s streets have become more and more unsafe. Young Black Londoners stab each other with a frequency that is way more prevalent than I can recall under previous Commissioners. Yet rather than put the necessary resources into tackling problems such as this, she and the Mayor diverted officers away from the sort of front line policing that was needed, into a ‘hate crime and hate speech’ hub that cost the taxpayer at least £1M. If this hub had concentrated on those who physically hurt people because they are different then it would have been somewhat acceptable,but this hub seems to spend an inordinate amount of time sitting on Twitter looking out for alleged ‘offence’. On her watch officers under her command also targeted and threatened to prosecute the historian Dr David Starkey and the conservative commentator Darren Grimes for comments made on a podcast produced by Mr Grimes.

It is unusual in itself for there to be the sort of open letter signed by high profile people calling for a Met Commissioner to not be reappointed. You expect such letters from followers of particular political groups or parties to put out such a letter but not from those who are such high profile individuals. If this sort of letter is unusual then the fact that it is signed by so many public figures from diverse political and viewpoint backgrounds is almost unprecedented. Cressida Dick must be a particular bad and troubling police officer for people as different as Baroness Lawrence, the brother of murdered private investigator Daniel Morgan, a BBC DJ, Edward Heath’s biographer, a former Tory MP and the relatives of those smeared by Carl Beech, to join together in calling for her not to be reappointed. I hope that these voices are listened to as Cressida Dick has not been an effective custodian of the Metropolitan Police.