Masters of the Bench

Cressida Dick has 36 years of public service, the majority of which she has spent in policing.  Her first ten years were spent in frontline uniform patrols /roles in the West End, South-West and South-East London.  She has held leadership roles in each of the organisations she has worked in, the Metropolitan Police Service, Thames Valley Police, the National Police College and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Cressida has overseen a wide variety of high-profile and complex policing investigations and operations spanning serious and organised crime, security and protection. She undertook command roles in a range of major incidents involving mass casualties in the UK and overseas. For many years she was also the lead for hostage negotiation in the UK.

Cressida was the first woman to be appointed a Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner in 2009. From 2011 to 2014 she was in charge of UK counter terrorism policing, leading operational security and counter terrorist operations for The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the London 2012 Olympics.

In 2014 Cressida joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office senior leadership team. Cressida became Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the UK’s largest police service, in April 2017.

Cressida is former president of the British Association of Women Police and has a Master’s Degree in Criminology from Cambridge.