Cressida Dick

On 22 February 2017, the Home Office and the MPS jointly announced that Dick would be appointed as the next Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police by the Queen, on the recommendation of the Home Secretary Amber Rudd.[24] She assumed office on 10 April 2017; her first official engagement was that afternoon being at the funeral of PC Keith Palmer, the officer killed in the 2017 Westminster attack.[25]

Dick is negotiating with the government in an effort to increase funding for the MPS. She said to LBC, "[Terrorism] is a shifting threat, not a spike, that puts a strain not just on counter-terror police but neighbourhood officers. This is not sustainable for my police service."[26] Dick fears the MPS will need to find £400 million per year savings in addition to the £600 million annual savings they have already found. She fears this will make fighting crime harder. Dick said, "I find it incredible to think that anybody would think that over the next four or five years we should lose that much extra out of our budget."[27]

In June 2017 Dick faced criticism for praising the "diversity" of the victims of the Islamic terror attack on London Bridge that killed eight people. Dick claimed that the nationalities of those killed told a proud story of the city's diversity, noting that "among those who died is someone who’s British, there are French, Australian, Canadian, Spanish".[28]

Dick said she is sure cuts to police funding in London is one factor among others in rising violent crime in there. The Guardian reported in May 2018 that the number of police officers fell below 35,000 for the first time in 15 years. Dick responded, "I'm hoping that we will get to well over 30,500 officers, more than 500 more than we currently have, by the end of next year [2019]." Dick also partly blamed social media for growing violent crime. Dick said, "We are seeing the glamorisation of violence, we are seeing social media being used to taunt other gangs, to bring violence about very quickly."[29] Dick said:

Dick is concerned about the effect of a no deal Brexit. She fears this would be costly and would put the public at risk, commenting "We will have to replace some of the things we currently use in terms of access to databases, the way in which we can quickly extradite and arrest people … [We will] have to replace them as effectively as we can, but it will be more costly, slower and potentially put [the] public at risk … There is no doubt about that. This is one of many things politicians deciding what to do need to be thinking about. (...) We would hope that we have as much as possible the instruments we currently have or something similar, as quickly as possible, to keep the public safe. The consequences of not having those things, and if there was [a] no-deal scenario, would be difficult in the short term".[30]

Dick's official portrait as Commissioner was unveiled in July 2019 as part of the commemorations to mark 100 years of women in the Metropolitan Police. The oil painting was paid for by Dick from out of her own salary to save public funds, and shows the commissioner in front of a map of London. She is portrayed in a police shirt rather than full tunic uniform, and sat for twenty hours in her own time for the artist Frances Bell. It will hang at the Hendon training centre alongside portraits of her 26 male predecessors. Portraits are usually unveiled after a Commissioner has stepped down, but Dick's colleagues felt unveiling her portrait would be a fitting way to mark the centenary of the first woman joining the Met.[31][32]