I’m in a same-sex relationship, new police chief reveals
THE new head of Britain’s biggest police force 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 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.
‘Commitment to diversity’
She warned that more officers will carry stun guns and that the frontline is likely to shrink further.
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 attends church but 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 high-profile 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.
Yesterday, Miss Dick said 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 commitment to diversity would ‘mark me out’ as a chief officer.
She has already set herself apart from Sir Bernard by abandoning his £65,000 Range Rover and taking a voluntary £40,000 pay cut.