Officer Dick promoted again

Cressida Dick, the officer in charge during the fatal police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station four years ago, has been promoted. She is to become Scotland Yard's new Assistant Commissioner Specialist Crime, the first woman ever to be appointed at this level.

The 49-year-old officer, who started her career walking the beat in the West End of London, will oversee the Metropolitan Police's most serious criminal investigations, including murder, rape, organised crime and cases of child abuse. She will be paid a salary of £172,000 plus benefits.
 
This is her second promotion since July 22, 2005 when De Menezes, a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, was mistaken for a suicide bomber and shot seven times by police. Dick has always defended her decisions that day in her capacity as the operation's 'Gold Commander'.

At last year's Old Bailey inquest, she told the jury: "Given what I now know and what I was told at the time, I wouldn't change those decisions. We did our very best to save life."

The IPCC report into the incident had criticised Dick for not making it explicitly clear to her officers that when she ordered De Menezes to be "stopped" she did not intend for him to be shot. The former senior Scotland Yard officer Brian Paddick, commenting at the time, agreed that Dick's order to "arrest him but whatever you do don't let him get on the Tube" was open to misinterpretation.

The new Assistant Commissioner has been on a career fast track since she joined the Met in 1983. An Oxford graduate with a Masters degree in Criminology from Cambridge, she quickly rose through the ranks. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone said she was one of the "most talented" officers he had worked with and that she had "commissioner potential".
 
Relatives of the innocent Brazilian today reacted with anger to news of her promotion. They have always called for the resignation of senior officers involved in the shooting and singled out Cressida Dick for particular criticism. They feel aggrieved that no one accepted responsibility for the killing and that no one has been held to account.

In London for the seven-week inquest last year, at the end of which an open verdict was returned, Maria Otone de Menezes, mother of Jean Charles, said of Dick: "She made a series of mistakes, she did everything wrong. I think she should resign." ·