Who should be the next Metropolitan Police Commissioner?
Applications to succeed Cressida Dick as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police close today. Whoever is chosen will be expected to defend the impartiality, integrity and independence of the Met, after the brutal manner of Dame Cressida’s departure at the hands of Sadiq Khan, who has proven to be an increasingly meddlesome Mayor of London in his second term. An already daunting job has been made infinitely more difficult by the requirement to steer the country’s largest police force through an intensely political strait, with the Mayor and the Home Secretary as Scylla and Charybdis threatening the successful candidate on Left and Right.
Dame Lynne Owens, the former Director-General of the National Crime Agency (NCA), had been assumed to be the frontrunner, after interrupting a distinguished career last year to recover from cancer. She tweeted this week that she had decided not to apply, saying only that her decision was “not health related” and that she was “actively looking for her next career challenge”. Her opting out will fuel speculation that the job of Met Commissioner has now become too toxic for the best police officers, leaving the field open for the office politicians.
In fact the most politically controversial of the possible candidates, Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, had already ruled himself out by letting it be known that he had applied for the vacancy at the NCA created by Dame Lynne’s departure. Britain’s most senior Asian police officer, Basu has been critical of the Government and Priti Patel would almost certainly have been hostile. He was only able to apply for the NCA post after his wife, Dr Nina Cope, moved from her role as a deputy to the Director-General to the Ministry of Defence, thereby removing a possible conflict of interest. Dame Cressida is married to a former Met police inspector. The world of securocrats is a small one.
The field is now described by the Guardian as “male and white”, with the new favourite supposedly a policeman-turned-thriller writer. Sir Mark Rowley, 57, is a former Chief Constable of Surrey and has experience at the Met, where he was most recently Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations until 2018, when he retired and was replaced by Basu. Since then he has produced a report on terrorism and co-authored a novel about radicalisation, The Sleep of Reason, with the journalist David Derbyshire. While this literary turn in Sir Mark’s career may not be held against him, it does suggest that mentally he has moved on from active policing. Five years is a long career break in any profession and a former spy who fictionalised his experiences in the manner of John Le Carré would certainly not be encouraged to apply to run one of the Intelligence services.
If Sir Mark is ruled out, that leaves the field open for candidates from outside London, such as Shaun Sawyer, Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, or for Andy Marsh, the head of the College of Policing. There are at least two senior officers inside the Met, Nick Ephrave and Matt Jukes, who have the experience to do the job. Any of these men would doubtless make a competent Commissioner.
But the sacking of Dame Cressida, the first woman (and the first openly gay or lesbian person) to be Britain’s top cop, leaves a bad taste in the mouth — especially given that the pretext was the alleged prevalence of institutionalised prejudice, whether racism, misogyny or homophobia, in the Met. If the first task of the new Commissioner is to regain the confidence of the women of London by rooting out a macho culture where rapists can hide in plain sight, it surely makes sense to appoint another woman. Priti Patel, who was thought to favour Dame Lynne Owens until she ruled herself out, may well take the view that the optics matter, provided that there is a female candidate who is respected and available.
In fact there is such a person. In any field, Lucy D’Orsi would be an outstanding candidate. Though just 52, she has been policing London since 1992. In 2011 she had just been appointed Chief Superintendent of Hammersmith and Fulham when the summer riots swept across the country. Ms D’Orsi showed outstanding courage and leadership, personally keeping the rioters at bay and reassuring the public. She had experience of political controversy when she was put in charge of the state visit of Xi Jinping in 2015, resisting Chinese pressure to ban all protests, though she was accused by demonstrators of being “heavy handed”. The Queen was well aware of her role and when they met a year later, she sympathised with Ms D’Orsi’s “bad luck” in dealing with security during the visit. Last year Ms D’Orsi became Chief Constable of the British Transport Police.
If she were appointed, Lucy D’Orsi would be one of the youngest Metropolitan Commissioners of modern times. But a charismatic, popular, dynamic and intelligent woman is just what the force needs. The murder of Sarah Everard by a serving constable, along with other scandals, means that morale in the Met is as low as public expectations of the new chief are high. The best possible candidate is one who can simultaneously restore discipline and reassure the capital of the highest standards of professionalism.
Lucy D’Orsi knows all about misogyny in the police and despite her youth she has at least as much first-hand experience of the cultural issues in the capital as any other candidate. Her appointment would go a long way towards giving the Met a fresh start. We may not know for a while who has applied for the job. If Lucy D’Orsi has not applied, it will be a great disappointment for Londoners who care about policing. If she has applied but is not on the shortlist, it will be a disgrace.
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