Cressida Dick sought £500,000 to stand down as Metropolitan police commissioner after the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, ousted her over a litany of scandals, documents reveal. Her tenure has been under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks with the revelation that the serial rapist David Carrick was kept on duty under her leadership despite being arrested on suspicion of rape. Documents detailing tense and bitter messages between Dick’s senior aide and advisers for Khan have been obtained by the Guardian. On 10 February 2022, the day Dick announced her departure, Robin Wilkinson – the Met’s former chief of corporate services – was messaging and emailing Khan’s top officials as the commissioner battled to save her job. In a text sent to the mayor’s chief of staff, David Bellamy, he said Dick “has contract to end April 2024. 6 months notice in contract but we know this isn’t voluntary. Lawyers clear Cress entitled to full amount.” Dick’s salary was £240,000 a year, and she had 26 months remaining on her contract at the time. In a phone call later that day, Wilkinson told Bellamy that upon agreeing to stand aside, Dick would need confidence there would be “a genuine and open discussion between lawyers to agree a suitable severance package that recognises the validity of the commissioner’s contract extension”. He instructed Bellamy to relay this message to the mayor. Dick was entitled to a salary of £270,000 as Britain’s top officer, but took £30,000 a year less. A report of events by Wilkinson shows Dick felt “entitled” to two years severance after she was pushed to stand aside. Her severance was settled at £170,000. Dick was the highest-ranking police officer in the Met between 2017 and 2022, including at the time of the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving officer in the force in March 2021. Over Dick’s four-year tenure as commissioner, the Met was mired in controversy. She resigned after “political pressure” from Khan, a report commissioned by the home secretary found last year. Among his reasons for the “erosion of trust and confidence” in the Met, the mayor cited the sharing of photographs and comments made by serving police officers about the murder victims Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry in June 2020; the strip-search of a 15-year-old Black girl known as Child Q by police officers at a school in Hackney in December 2020; the abduction and murder of Everardin March 2021; the policing of a vigil in memory of Everard the same month; and police advice in September 2021 that women should wave down a bus if they had concerns after being stopped by a lone police officer. Documents released to the Guardian under freedom of information laws show the events leading up to Dick’s resignation. In a report of events by Wilkinson, he rejects a six-month voluntary payout worth £120,000 in a text exchange with Bellamy. Dick ultimately agreed a six-month payout plus an additional payment of two months’ salary, totalling £165,727.36. Fresh allegations point to droves of sexual abuses by Met police officers dating to before and during Dick’s tenure. After a reign of terror lasting between 2001 and 2021, Carrick this month admitted to 49 counts covering 85 acts of serious offending, including 48 rapes. He is to be sentenced on Monday. In the wake of his conviction, the Met announced it would review every past claim of domestic abuse or sexual offence against its officers and staff. It said it was looking into about 1,000 of its 45,000 employees. The force declined to comment on the details of Dick’s pay.