New Met boss: I’m in relationship with officer called Helen
BRITAIN’S new top police officer last night said diversity was at the heart of her role as she confirmed she was in a same- sex relationship with a colleague.
Cressida Dick, 56, said she believed ‘passionately’ that every modern police force must represent the communities it serves.
The Scotland Yard Commissioner said there was ‘some way to go’ for the country’s biggest force to have the confidence of ‘all our public’.
Speaking after becoming the first woman to lead British policing, Miss Dick pledged to drag it into the ‘brave new world’ of 21st- century technology. She warned that more officers will carry Tasers, that the frontline is likely to shrink further, and controversial stop-and-search tactics may increase.
The fiercely private officer, who commands huge respect across the ranks, also opened up for the first time about her private life. Miss Dick confirmed in an interview with London’s Evening Standard that she is in a relationship with a Scotland Yard inspector called Helen.
Describing herself as ‘incredibly well supported’ and a ‘very happy person’, she said her partner was a response team leader in a busy South London borough.
In a further insight into her personal life, she said she enjoyed exercise and reading biographies and she attends church, although she is ‘not super-religious’.
Miss Dick won one of the most prestigious jobs in world policing after being urged to apply by Prime Minister Theresa May. During a 31-year career, she has led some of the most sensitive and highprofile inquiries, including overseeing the fight to bring Stephen Lawrence’s killers to justice.
She was also ultimately responsible for the disastrous operation that led to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, but was vindicated by an Old Bailey jury.
After leaving the Met Police in 2014 amid rumours of tension with her predecessor as commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, she spent two years in a senior Foreign Office security role.
During a round of media interviews yesterday, Miss Dick said she suspected she was ‘slightly different’ from other officers. But she said forces were ‘chock full of people who are very diverse’ and the stereotype of ‘ monochrome and monolithic’ policing institutions was wrong.
Miss Dick said her commit- ment to diversity will ‘mark me out’ as a chief officer.
‘I believe passionately that we need to represent the public, that we need to have confidence from all our public and there’s some way to go for the Met,’ she said. ‘You will see me doing an enormous amount to try to improve confidence in our communities.’
Miss Dick set herself apart from Sir Bernard by abandoning his £65,000 Range Rover and taking a voluntary £40,000 pay cut. His macho ‘total policing’ motto has been dropped from the force’s website.
The new commissioner said battling to reduce surging levels of violence, including gun and knife crime, will be at the centre of her role. She added that in many cases young people not linked to gangs were carrying weapons in the mistaken belief it made them safer.
Miss Dick also warned that the number of frontline officers may shrink because of budget cuts, but the force can still deliver a ‘very effective’ service.
‘Monochrome and monolithic’