Cressida Dick (Part Two)

Bad Gays

Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

History

4.6 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2022

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Unusually for this show, which normally focuses on long departed historical figures, today we’re going to talk about someone who’s still very much in the news. Until last week, she was the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force, and was the first woman and the first LBGTQ person to hold the rank, Dame Cressida Dick. Today, part two of two: we discuss Dick's tenure at the Metropolitan Police, the extrajudicial murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, Dick's cynical deployment of her identity to deflect critique, the spy cops scandal, the botched investigation into gay serial killer Stephen Port, the Met's dismal record on race, and the protests that finally forced Dick out. ----more---- SOURCES: Ramzy Alwakeel, “I Covered Stephen Port’s Murders. I Know Cressida Dick’s Departure Isn’t Enough,” OpenDemocracy, accessed February 22, 2022, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/cressida-dick-resignation-met-police-stephen-ports-murders/ Anonymous, “Gangs Violence Matrix and Black Londoners,” Text, Mayor’s Question Time, December 10, 2018, https://www.london.gov.uk/questions/2018/5242 Jason Bennetto, “We Are Still Racist, Police Chief Admits,” The Independent, April 21, 2003, sec. News, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/we-are-still-racist-police-chief-admits-116145.html Owen Bowcott and Owen Bowcott Legal affairs correspondent, “Jean Charles de Menezes: Family Lose Fight for Police Officers to Be Prosecuted,” The Guardian, March 30, 2016, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/30/jean-charles-de-menezes-police-officers-shouldshould-not-be-prosecuted-echr Graham Bowley, “Police Erred in Shooting in London, Report Finds,” The New York Times, August 18, 2005, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/world/europe/police-erred-in-shooting-in-london-report-finds.html Caroline Davies, “Stephen Port Laptop Not Inspected until He Had Killed Three Times, Inquest Told,” The Guardian, October 13, 2021, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/13/stephen-port-laptop-not-inspected-until-he-had-killed-three-times-inquest-told Vikram Dodd and Dan Sabbagh, “Daniel Morgan Murder: Inquiry Brands Met Police ‘Institutionally Corrupt,’” The Guardian, June 15, 2021, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/15/daniel-morgan-met-chief-censured-for-hampering-corruption-inquiry Jamie Grierson and Jamie Grierson Home affairs correspondent, “Met Carried out 22,000 Searches on Young Black Men during Lockdown,” The Guardian, July 8, 2020, sec. Law, https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jul/08/one-in-10-of-londons-young-black-males-stopped-by-police-in-may Mark Hughes, “Seven Mistakes That Cost De Menezes His Life,” The Independent, December 13, 2008, sec. News, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/seven-mistakes-that-cost-de-menezes-his-life-1064466.html Marina Hyde, “Farewell, Cressida Dick, the Met Chief Only Interested in One Thing: Ignoring Bad Coppers,” The Guardian, February 11, 2022, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/11/farewell-cressida-dick-the-met-chief-only-interested-in-one-thing-ignoring-bad-coppers Paul Lewis and Rob Evans, “Secrets and Lies: Untangling the UK ‘spy Cops’ Scandal,” The Guardian, October 28, 2020, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/28/secrets-and-lies-untangling-the-uk-spy-cops-scandal Ben Quinn, “Macpherson Report: What Was It and What Impact Did It Have?,” The Guardian, February 22, 2019, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/22/macpherson-report-what-was-it-and-what-impact-did-it-have Alex S. Vitale, “Cressida Dick Isn’t the Problem. The Police Are the Problem,” OpenDemocracy, accessed February 22, 2022, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/cressida-dick-metropolitan-police-alex-vitale/ “Trapped in the Gangs Matrix” (Amnesty International, May 2020), https://www.amnesty.org.uk/london-trident-gangs-matrix-metropolitan-police “R

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody, and welcome to Season 5, Episode 9 of Bad Gays, a podcast about evil and complicated queers in history.
0:23.1	My name is Ben Miller.
0:24.0	I'm a writer-researcher, a member of the board of the Shulis Museum in Berlin.
0:28.0	And my name's Heulemi.
0:28.9	I'm a writer and author.
0:31.0	This is our first ever two-part episode, and we've been covering since last week the life of Cressida Dick, who was until
0:40.9	quite recently the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London. If you haven't listened to
0:46.0	last week's episode, now is a great time to pause this episode and go back and listen to last
0:51.6	week's episode. We will briefly talk about at the beginning of the show,
0:55.7	some of the things that we discussed in last week's episode,
0:58.5	but it would be better to start from the beginning.
1:00.4	And Hugh told that story so well,
1:02.6	especially the history of the relationship
1:05.0	between the history of queer lives in the United Kingdom
1:09.0	and the history of policing in the United Kingdom and also
1:11.2	the first decades of Dick's life. We also want to remind you that if you like the show and if
1:19.6	you like what we do here, you can visit our website at badgayspod.com where you can find information
1:25.1	about our forthcoming book, Bad Gaze of Homosexual History,
1:28.6	available for pre-order now from Verso Books, as well as a link to our Patreon, information about
1:34.1	t-shirts and an archive of all the episodes we've ever done. So please do go check that out
1:38.0	if you like the show and what we do. So Hugh, do you want to get us up to speed with where we
1:42.0	are from last week? Yeah, yeah, in last week's episode, which was part one of his profile, we discussed the history of women in the metropolitan police, the Met's history of vice policing and harassment of LGBTQ people, and the first few decades of Dick's rise through ranks from this beat cop to completing her MA in criminology at Cambridge,
	...

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