Cressida Dick

She is the third and youngest child of Marcus William Dick (1920–1971), Senior Tutor at Balliol College, Oxford, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, and Cecilia Rachel Dick (née Buxton, 1927–1995), a University of Oxford historian, daughter of Wing Commander Denis Alfred Jex Buxton, granddaughter of the banker and politician Alfred Fowell Buxton, and great-granddaughter of Thomas Jex-Blake, headmaster of Rugby School.

Dame Cressida Rose Dick (born 16 October 1960) is a retired British police officer who served as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 2017 to 2022.

She is both the first female and first openly lesbian officer to lead London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS or "The Met").

Dick was born on 16 October 1960 in Oxford, where she was brought up.

Dick was educated at the Dragon School and Oxford High School, then in 1979 she was admitted to Balliol College, Oxford where she took a BA in Agriculture and Forest Sciences.

While at Oxford, Dick was a wicketkeeper on a cricket team.

Before joining the police, Dick worked briefly in a large accountancy firm.

Dick joined The Met in 1983.

In 1983, Dick joined the Metropolitan Police as a constable, patrolling a beat in the West End of London.

Within a decade she had been promoted to chief inspector.

From 1995 to 2000, she was a high-ranking officer in the Thames Valley Police.

In 1995, she transferred to Thames Valley Police, where she was initially a superintendent and then chief superintendent and area commander for Oxford.

Some years later, she took a course in criminology at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, gaining a Master of Studies degree in 2000 and graduating at the top of her class.

After earning a master's degree in criminology, she returned to the Met in 2001, and subsequently held senior roles in the force's diversity directorate, in anti-gang and anti-gun crime operations, and in counterterrorism operations.

She returned to the MPS in 2001 as a commander and head of the diversity directorate.

In 2003, she became the head of Operation Trident, which then numbered 300 officers.

Operation Trident investigates gang- and gun-related crime; as head of the unit, Dick was credited with progress in reducing crime among "Yardie" drug gangs.

In 2005, she headed the operation which led to the fatal Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Dick was commander of Operation Kratos, and in the immediate aftermath of 21 July 2005 London bombings, she was the gold commander in the control room during the operation which led to the police fatally shooting Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian man who had been wrongly identified as a potential suicide bomber.

In 2006, the Metropolitan Police Authority (led by Len Duvall) promoted her to Deputy Assistant Commissioner Security and Protection.

A subsequent review faulted the MPS for lapses, but Dick was cleared of personal blame in a 2007 trial.

As commissioner, she has overseen a service affected by cuts to police budgets and staffing levels.

Controversial aspects of Dick's tenure include the Met's use of stop and search tactics, the handling of recommendations made after the botched Operation Midland, and arrests of attendees at a candlelight vigil for Sarah Everard and complaints by the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel that she obstructed their inquiry into police corruption in 2021.

On 10 February 2022, Dick announced she would be leaving the role after losing the confidence of Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, over her response to racism and misogyny in the force.

Dick left office on 10 April 2022.

In January 2023, it was revealed that part of the reason for Dick's ousting was the Met's handling of the case of serial rapist David Carrick, a Met police officer.

In a 2008 statement to the inquest investigating de Menezes's death, Dick expressed deep personal regret over de Menezes' death, and said, "If you ask me whether I think anybody did anything wrong or unreasonable on the operation, I don't think they did."

The inquest jury recorded an open verdict.

In a separate trial, the Met was found to have committed catastrophic errors that had led to de Menezes's death, but Dick was cleared of any "personal culpability" for the tragedy.

The affair nevertheless almost derailed Dick's career.

In June 2009, she was promoted to the rank of assistant commissioner, the first woman to hold this rank substantively.

In 2009, the Metropolitan Police Authority promoted her to Assistant Commissioner Specialist Crime, in charge of the Specialist Crime Directorate.

She became the first woman to become an assistant commissioner.

Within the specialist crime directorate, Dick was trained as a hostage negotiator.

She briefly served as acting deputy commissioner in late 2011 and 2012 during a vacancy in the office.

She oversaw the Met's security preparations for the security operations for the 2012 London Olympics.

Dick retired from the Met in 2015 to accept a role in the Foreign Office, but returned in 2017 on being selected by the Home Office to succeed Bernard Hogan-Howe as MPS Commissioner, becoming the first woman to hold this post.

Dick's career has included several significant crises and controversies, as well as a series of career comebacks.

In 2019, Dick said, "The events of that day stay with one; I think about it quite often. It was a traumatic period. It was an awful time for so many people, obviously and most of all Jean Charles's family, the people who were there when it happened, the firearms officers, the surveillance officers."

De Menezes's family opposed Dick's later appointment as Met commissioner.