24 Quotes by Cressida Dick

Being a firearms officer is incredibly highly scrutinised now, and I think it is one of the things that puts off quite a lot of people. And if you think that you are more visible in that role as a woman, you might feel slightly less inclined to go into it than a man.

But I have on occasion suddenly realised that some men feel slightly threatened by, or slightly baffled by, or confused by, possibly even now, by having a woman in... a very powerful role.

I want to bear down on violent crime, in all its aspects from terrorism to sexual offences but definitely knife and gun crime, particularly as it affects young people.

I don't think the public want to see loads and loads of firearms officers everywhere, what they do want to know is that we are able to respond well and prevent things and we will protect them properly.

It is not in my mind's eye that all officers will be carrying a Taser but we should have people able to deploy it.

That is the great thing about policing, you do have a lot of responsibility very early and you have got to make decisions, sometimes life and death decisions, very quickly and there is something about putting a uniform on and thinking 'people are looking to me to make decisions and to look after them' that makes you feel capable.

One of the things we do not want is to become a complete fortress. This is not going to happen with military on every street corner or armed police officers everywhere. We do not want that so we have to be intelligent in our response and to be proportionate in our response.

There will be occasions when someone has suffered a crime where it is either obvious that they are not looking for an investigation or that there are no investigative opportunities and you just have to be up front about that.

London has a 50 per cent female population so we want to aim long term to have 50 per cent female officers. It's good for police to reflect the public that we serve.