Anil Kant Neil Basu, an Indian-origin British police officer, the most senior one with Asian heritage, is among the short-listed cops to become the next London Metropolitan police commissioner or chief of the hallowed Scotland Yard.
Neil Basu is likely to replace Cressida Dick, the first woman to occupy the position, who resigned on Thursday after London Mayor Sadiq Khan lost confidence in her.
Neil Basu, the son of an Indian doctor father from Kolkata and Welsh mother, 53, assistant commissioner rank, has been a rising star at the Yard, a highly rated officer, for some time.
Basu, an economics graduate from Nottingham University, joined the Met Police in 1992. According to the Guardian newspaper, a widely respected figure in the police force, Basu was the hero during the London Bridge incident two years ago, when he and his team nabbed and shot dead the terror convict Usman Khan.
“He is widely seen as capable, and is mostly well thought of.’ If appointed, he will be the first ethnic minority person to become London’s police commissioner, one of the most coveted jobs in policing in the world,” said The Guardian.
According to the paper, Basu may not be in Johnson’s good books after he told this publication as counter-terrorism chief in an August 2019 interview that a no-deal Brexit would mean Britain’s safety and security would suffer. At that point, there was considerable danger of the UK crashing out of the European Union (EU) without an agreement, which it later avoided, but not without a frictionless relationship.
Basu was vocal about the racial discrimination he suffered during childhood in the past.
In a blog in October 2020, he said that he did not like the term “Black History Month” because “I don’t like the fact that we need a special month to recognise and celebrate black achievement or understand racism”, the Evening Standard newspaper reported.
Others in the fray include Martin Hewitt, Chair of the National Police Chiefs Council, Simon Byrne, Chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Mark Rowley, former head of counter-terrorism, Matt Jukes, another assistant commissioner in the Met and currently acting head of the counter-terrorism, Louise Rolfe, a leader and specialist on tackling violence against women and Andy Cooke, a former chief of Merseyside police and now with the policing inspectorate.
The London police commissioner is chosen by consensus by the home secretary and the London mayor.
