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Communities must do more to condemn terror attacks and report extremists, says Cressida Dick
Communities must “step up their game” by condemning terror attacks and providing more information to the authorities, Britain's most senior police officer has suggested.
Scotland Yard chief Cressida Dick, who worked in counter-terror earlier in her career, described the recent wave of attacks as “unprecedented in my working life".
She said: “We in this country have faced a terrorist threat throughout my life - it changed and morphed and we will change and adapt to what appears to be a new reality for us.”
Ms Dick, the head of the Metropolitan police, was asked if she supported Labour’s plans to pay for more police if the party wins the general election on Thursday.
She said: “We do have extensive powers, we need to look at whether we are using them to the full extent. We will be working with whoever is in Government to see whether further powers would assist.
“Every leader is going to ask for more powers, of course they are. We need to look at our strategy, we need to look at our resourcing.
“We have always been able to step up our game. That is what we need to do now. As do people in our communities.
“We get lots of information, more than we ever have. We have people standing up and condemning these attacks. We need more in the future.”
“We have been investing in highly trained, highly mobile officers who are extraordinary capable. We have got some fantastic people coming into that World.”
Ms Dick said she did not think the public wanted to see every officer armed on the streets.
She said: “I don't think the public in this country want to live in a place where we are all armed to the teeth, and on every street corner there is someone with a high-powered weapon.”
The latest atrocity has sparked fears that Britain is in the grip of a flurry of copycat incident.
Ms Dick acknowledged that it was "certainly a possibility" that attacks were triggering the ones to follow.
All of the recent attacks had a "primarily domestic centre of gravity", the Metropolitan Police Commissioner said.
"We will always be looking to see if anything has been directed from overseas, but I would say the majority of the threat that we are facing at the moment does not appear to be directed from overseas," she added.