Name: MPW London 2019: A Conversation with Cressida Dick
Uploaded: 2019-06-03
Duration: 15 min 11 s
Description: Cressida Dick, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, talks with Fortune's Maithreyi Seetharaman about advances in security technology, and how London police prepared for President Trump's visit.

There's a reason we pick precedent to come as our first guests cuz we knew we would not be late. She has to get to the state dinner cuz she has to manage the security of a President, a Queen the entire families of both. So we are gonna be on time Cressida. Thank you. Luckily we've done the makeup sir. There you go right. She just has to. She just literally has to head over. So here's my question for you since the makeup is done, and what is that state banquet gonna look like tonight because I think a lot of people are wondering, How fun is that party gonna be? [ LAUGH ] Well, I don't know exactly. All I know is it will be Glittering. It will be on a large scale. It will be very exciting. The people at Buckingham Palace have the amazing ability to be both obviously very formal in some ways and very informal and make the humblest and the person who may think that the most important person in the room. Feel really, really special and welcome. So I'm sure it will be great fun. It'll be fascinating to hear the speeches, cuz I'm sure that we will get some really interesting insights into the tone of both. But it'll be a great night and. I'm the commissioner of Metropolitan Police. We adore protecting visiting heads of state whoever they may be. It's extraordinary to have a state visit and then want one on this sort of scale. We've done that before, we'll do them in the future, but it's a great time for London. How different is it going to be, because I know you and the mayor had to take a lot of heat in the last, if you were here during the extinction rebellion. protest. There was a lot of heat that you had to take. How much preparation is different this time around for a state visit? I know you do so many of these. You've done a lot with U. S. administrations before and how easy is it gonna be for all of us to travel tomorrow back to here? [ LAUGH ] So when we take our role really seriously on the one hand to keep safe the visiting head of state and their entourage and everybody connected with it and of course our own role family and on the other hand in Liberal community like ours, to ensure that if people wish to protest lawfully, they can do so without crime and do so socially. So, we do those both things, and it's just not about this two days, The heads of state are meeting up the heads of state down in Portsmouth and again, my protection of this will be with them. We always put an enormous amount of preparation into every visiting head of state visit. And we work really closely with our counterparts, in this case, from the United States. We have a really long established relationship with them, as you say, and we will be pretty firm if protesters are intending to try to protest in a way, which is unlawful and very, very firm if anybody wants to do anything which might in any way in danger, the security of the business, obviously. So we've done a lot of preparation. I'm very confident I've got great people. I'm sure it'll go well. Well I know I wanna come to all of you for questions in just a minute because I love getting you involved in these conversations right off the top of the bat. But to set the record straight, there's a lot of talk about how many officers are going to be out there protecting the president at the time of Brexit uncertainty, budget cuts, blah, blah, blah, How many offices, what's the budget looking like, can you set the record straight from what we're hearing. So I am not gonna give any details cuz we don't, we tend to add it all of our [ UNKNOWN ] to it but all I can say if she's read things like 10000 offices, that's completely wrong. [ UNKNOWN ] Miles above what we will be having. And actually this particular visit, in terms of the number of protests and the complexity of the protests, at least as they have been made known to us, is very much less than last year's. So I think the stretch on us and we work really closely with other police forces on UK policing. Is this year, less than last time, the president of the United States visited us. Well here's where the conversation gets interesting. I know we introduced Cressida as the first female Met Commissioner, lots and lots of other firsts that you keep getting labeled with. And I remember reading somewhere that people call you the first female Met Commissioner or the first openly gay Commissioner. Is probably the most boring thing about you. What is the most interesting? [ LAUGH ] Goodness [ BLANK_AUDIO ] I think is anything very interesting about me. I love my job. I started work on patrol, not many, you know hundreds of meters away from here as a beat constable and that's what we do and at heart I'm a beat Conservancy. I'm now leading an organization of 40, 000 people with lots lots of national and indeed some international responsibilities but at heart I'm a police officer and I've had a wonderful time doing it. Well, let's get some questions if you have any cuz we have so many questions about security, national security, terrorism, knife crime, we have our mic handlers right there. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Hi. Alan Murray. Sorry to take the first question. I'm demographically unqualified for this. [ LAUGH ] But I'm curious because in the United States, there's gonna be a lot of talk about technology in the next couple of days in the United States. We've had these voices pick up San Francisco first saying the facial recognition should not Be used in law enforcement in the city, I'm curious what your view on that is? Yeah so I think that's fascinating and important. I mean London is for those who've been here relatively and frequently, it's a very safe city we need to keep it a safe city into the future. And London's wealth I guess depends to a large extent on being a place that you know not least foreign investors want to come and be And put their money and and live. And we, as we go forward in my view need to make the best use of modern technologies, but obviously in a way which is acceptable to the public because we have to balance individual people's Security within the individual people of communities failing about their privacy. And in the death rates that is quite a complicated conversation but it needs to be had. [ LAUGH ] And I actually believe that live facial recognition technology properly overseen, properly thought about, properly [ UNKNOWN ] is something that our public would probably expect us to be doing. You're sitting in a city that probably has a greater density of CCTV, much loved by the public than almost any city in the world. And used by the police to protect people as it's happening all over London at the moment and also to do investigations if a crime does occur. And live facial recognition I think could be very useful. What's a debate we're not having? So in so many ways, the bad guys are adopting the newest technologies very fast. Hostile states of course adopting new technologies very fast. And in law enforcement in this country some adoption of new technologies and of course we're talking to for example our colleagues in New York and other American cities a lot about technologist but what there isn't enough of his public discourse about what is acceptable and what isn't some what people would want because It needs to be a political decision informed by what the public want, not a decision made by what you might call a secure [ UNKNOWN ] I've got an interesting safety. Of course as assistant I've got an interesting liberty and privacy as well, absolutely. But the balance needs to be talked about and there needs to be leadership around these issues I'm trying to Gear people up a bit in this country but I think we need to talk about it and not unfortunately in the very binary way that it is often talked about. Cuz this is nuanced and difficult. Does that worry you? That there are comparisons to a nanny state, a police state when we start talking about technology and the use of facial recognition and people throw up other countries as examples? Where's the wrong word? I think it's important that we have always you know, in a in a in a place like this, you know the back of our minds a proper fear of what might be described a police state. You know nobody in this city wants to live or work or visit a place in which You know data is used to control the citizen any more than we want to. You know your visiting or living in a city right now that still has a primarily unarmed police service that prides itself on policing by consent and upholding people's human rights. So we in all their forms. So we absolutely don't want to sort of. Go by mistake or without thinking about it, down a road which actually intrudes n a way that seems like people are being watched in a way they don't want to be watched. Or controlled in a way that's inappropriate. In the The norm or ethically. Finding that [ UNKNOWN ] is quite hard in one word. I'm sure some of you wrestling within the way, because people have different with the disruption of new technologies. People have quite different views about leprosy, and who are to be able to intrude in what way. That's quite hard getting the consensus. But I think, to cut to your question again sir. If a terrorist is walking down the street out here, most of the public in London would have thought that probably we were always using technology that ought to be able to get that person stopped. And if that included life facial recognition, they probably think for the most serious crimes it ought to be being used. We're miles from that, by the way. But unfortunately, when you watch the Bourne Supremacy or Bourne or any of those things, it's full of it. And we can't just put our heads in the sand we are risk on one hand being really, really, really left behind, or on the other hand, intruding in a way that subsequently It results in a great public enquiry and loss of competence in their police service which is the most fundamental thing in this country. People need to trust their police and believe they are people of integrity. And you being working on that to quite an extent when it comes to recruitent and all of these other issues, the question here is night crime comes up if you live in London, protest, domestic terrorism. You talked about foreign influence to cyber crime, organized crime. When we head in to Brexit you've also been pretty vocal about how we may be on the back foot so when you combine technology Brexit potential down the road. How do you see the next couple of months and your leadership, playing out, when you look at how you have to tackle all of the issues that you're facing as a [ INAUDIBLE ] commissioner Couple of months. Well, we're hoping. [ LAUGH ] She gives me a couple of months, that's good. I'm hoping to carry on for a few more years, but not. No, a couple of months until Brexit or until we decide what we're doing with it. I see, so specifically about that. Well, we are the metropolitan police, we have Scotland Yard, we're a well brand. We're proud of what we do and we're very well known on the streets of London and We need to maintain a sense amongst our citizens and our visitors, that this is a place where people know what they're doing, they're getting on the job that present, they're out there, they're supporting and protecting people, and preventing crime and they kinda investigating on what we can't. And. Actually, the B work doesn't affect that very much at all. That's just what we need to be doing. We are working really closely with the government. We're working really closely with other colleagues in European states similar roles to mine to make sure that whatever the framework after we can make the most of it. But absolutely, it is the case that if we were to come out without any sort of deal Then there ill be an awful lot of work to do to be able to replicate these current systems that we have access to. For example, automatically or the European arrest warrant which is very powerful. Replacing that for example by traditionally slower, more expensive, more difficult. We would have a steep mountain to climb. But I don't want people to think that in saying that I am saying you know its a very gloomy picture although you know London is usually at risk if its simply that there have to be alot more investment and we have to work really hard too. Lets get another question from the room. Can we get a mike handler. Any perfect, thank you. Thank you. I'm living in Johannesburg and I work across Africa, where policing is quite intellectual. Could you introduce yourself .>> Sorry, Sheila day before I work with Standard Bank and I work across sub Saharan Africa, not even in Johannesburg. And policing is quite immature. Often there is excessive use of force. Now, throughout your career you must have seen the Metropolitan police mature. Do you have any advice or any lessons learned in terms of Reforming the police and building capacity. Thank you. I've seen it change hugely here in 36 years as you say. I don't know how much the parallels although, but I would say It's very, important that as far as possible you recruit and develop good people. Good people of good values, who are broadly, if possible, incorruptible, and you can protect them from corruption. Secondly, it's incredibly important that the outside world looks in and comes in to policing as much as possible. So we are highly accountable. We're highly transparent and We have people looking out our work, our tactics, our strategies, our policies, our practice all day long and reflecting back to us. But also talking to the public about whether that's good or bad or indifferent. We've increased that transparency by the, I haven't got one on but all my front liner officers have. Body worn cameras. And have had for about three years which they love to use because it they say it protects them from complaints. It gives them good evidence. So increasing accountability, increasing good governance and increasing in my view, transparency raises standards. It's tough, but it's very important. And increasing diversity is just fundamental. Being a police service that people will have trust in a police service that's going to be effective in the modern world must be very, very diverse in all its forms in my view, which is why we've been going on and on about 100 years of women and we're already probably have more women and more rights, more roles and more levels than any other police service. I think But we want many more but it's not just that sought of diversity of cause because you know, here you are in the most diverse city on the planet and we have to have the confidence of the public in all of our, most of us communities that are, people have to feel this their place not an invading force, this is their place that they can trust and they are well with not a constant work in progress. Got a little bit of work on the way actually. [ LAUGH ] Well, we have a little work to do here as well. [ LAUGH ] Thank you very much to all of our guests here. Thank you. Goodbye. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you, it was a pleasure. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

MPW London 2019: A Conversation with Cressida Dick

Leadership

Cressida Dick, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, talks with Fortune's Maithreyi Seetharaman about advances in security technology, and how London police prepared for President Trump's visit.