Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick to face questions on Downing Street parties

Controversial: Politics & Govt Politics & Govt: In The News
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Despite growing evidence of parties held at Number 10 during lockdown, the Met Police has said it had no plans to investigate any of the alleged parties. Most recently the force has said it will certainly not launch an inquiry while Whitehall enforcer Sue Gray is conducting an internal inquiry.

But, on Tuesday, members of the London Assembly Committee will quiz the Met Police chief. The Mirror understands London Assembly member’s Caroline Russell of the Green Party and assembly member Caroline Pidgeon of the Liberal Democrats will lead the questions.

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey previously said the police “mustn’t turn a blind eye” on the parties. “Cressida Dick mustn’t let him off the hook through a shady establishment stitch-up. The police don’t need the government’s permission to investigate a crime, and they mustn’t turn a blind eye to criminality just because it is committed by Boris Johnson,” Mr Davey said.

Andrew Selous and Stephen Crabb are among Tory MPs who have called the Met police to launch a probe into the parties.

This “quiz” may be sideshow but it may yet be revealing and damning … :thinking:

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So far:

Dame Cressida Dick tells the Greater London Assembly’s police and crime committee that the Met is “now investigating a number of events that took place at Downing Street and Whitehall in the last two years”.

She says officers have assessed several other events which appear to have taken place, but on the available information these do not meet the threshold for further investigation.

“The fact we are now investigating does not of course mean that fixed penalty notices will be issued in every instance and to every person involved,” she adds.

Dame Cressida Dick says it would not normally be a proportionate use of officers’ time to investigate lockdown breaches after the fact.

There “could have been thousands of complaints” of this nature, she says, describing them as summary offences.

But she says that some officers and high-profile people have been investigated after the fact.

“The occasions on which we have done that is where they appeared to be the most serious and flagrant type of breach,” she says.

She says there are four factors the Met guidelines considered:

  • There has to be some evidence
  • Those involved knew or ought to have known they were breaking the law
  • Where not investigating would significantly undermine the legitimacy of law
  • There was little ambiguity around the absence of any reasonable defence.
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She’ll be cross examined…

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I do not believe a word she says on ANY subject nor do I trust her.

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True.
Dick and Khan’t make a lovely couple. They’ve done a great deal for Londonistan, and I’m just glad that I don’t live there!

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She is a complete waste of space who should have been sacked after all the terrible things that have happened on her watch.

She should never have been made a Dame either.

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They are both wastes of space, perhaps for different reasons.
Just look at their records.

Dick: crime on the increase, especially knife crime.
Khan’t: road closures and taxes on motorists.

Who would want to live in that place? I just can’t see the attraction.

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