When Cressida Dick took over as the head of London’s Metropolitan Police last April, Britain was in the midst of a wave of terrorist attacks and she spent her first day as Commissioner attending the funeral of an officer knifed to death by a terrorist steps from Parliament.
Now after what she called a “ghastly” summer, Ms. Dick said the terrorism threat in London has moved to a higher level and it shows no signs of reversing. “This is not a small spike, this is a shift,” Ms. Dick said during a meeting with foreign journalists on Wednesday. “For us, it is definitely a shift and it translates into greater workloads for our people. … It’s translating for us now into something like a 30-per-cent increase in workload for [terrorism] teams.”
The 57-year-old police chief, who barely met the 5-feet-4-inch height requirement when she became a police officer in 1983, is the first woman to lead the force in its 188-year history. – READ MORE
