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The new London police chief: Mark Rowley, former terror investigator
Photo: Victoria Jones/AP
The scandal-plagued London police have a new boss.
The Home Office has announced that former anti-terrorist unit chief Mark Rowley has been appointed chief of the Metropolitan Police.
He succeeds Cressida Dick, who has headed the police department since 2017.
Rowley made a name for himself as the lead investigator into various terrorist attacks that rocked the country in 2017.
Dick was resigned after London Mayor Sadiq Khan voted no confidence in her.
Rowley announced that he wanted to regain public confidence, which had suffered badly in recent years.
The Metropolitan Police recently had to deal with serious scandals.
Among other things, it was about hatred against women and homosexuals as well as racism within the police authority.
The murder of Londoner Sarah Everard, who was raped and killed by a police officer, also eroded the reputation of the London police force.
The perpetrator had used his police ID to arrest the 33-year-old in 2021 on the pretext of broken corona rules.
In fact, he kidnapped her.
To make matters worse, pictures later went around the world of police officers violently breaking up a peaceful vigil by women for Everard.
The case of the murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman also caused great outrage.
They were discovered stabbed to death in a London park in the summer of 2020.
The perpetrator had randomly selected and killed her as a victim in an alleged pact with the devil.
Several police officers assigned to guard the crime scene took selfies with the lifeless bodies and sent them, along with disparaging comments, to colleagues via WhatsApp.
jso/dpa