You could pause at any one of the 363 pages in Baroness Louise Casey’s report and find a detail, case study, or quote so extraordinary and chilling that you need reminding this is written about London’s police service.
There’s the officer who tried to kill herself after being raped by a colleague, before having to remain on the same team despite pleas to her supervisors. Incidents of dildos being placed in coffee cups, people being urinated on in showers as part of initiations, the time a Sikh officer had his beard cut because another thought it was funny and a Muslim officer encountering bacon left in their shoe.
These can sound like isolated incidents. Baroness Casey goes to great lengths to demonstrate they are not. They are the consequence of an organisation whose culture has gone badly wrong. One that is letting down the public and many of its own employees.
The independent review into the standards of behaviour and internal culture of the Metropolitan Police Service concludes that the force is institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic. It is riddled with bullying, poor leadership and the “rotten” treatment of black people.
It is an organisation Baroness Casey calls “long on hubris and short on humility”, with problems so severe there could be other officers as bad as Wayne Couzens, who kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard, or David Carrick, the serial rapist, still on duty. Unless significant progress is made, the report warns that more radical options should be considered, such as splitting the Met into national, specialist and London responsibilities.
The report also draws attention to the impact of austerity on policing, pointing out that the Met’s budget is 18 per cent smaller in real terms than at the start of the previous decade. It further states that the erosion of frontline policing has weakened the “strongest day-to-day point of connection with Londoners” as well as the force’s “response to male violence perpetrated against women and children.”
In reply, Sir Mark Rowley said he was “deeply sorry” for the “appalling examples of discrimination” and noted there was a long journey back to restore public confidence in the police. However, the Met Commissioner declined to accept the report’s conclusion that his force is institutionally prejudiced.
Bereaved families of those let down by the Met have today spoken out. Baroness Doreen Lawrence, whose son Stephen was murdered in 1993, called the force “rotten to the core”. Relatives of the victims of serial killer Stephen Port, who went on to murder a further three young gay men after police failures in investigating the death of his first victim, called for an inquiry to learn “how and why this force is failing people so badly”.
With the usual time constraints imposed by a daily newsletter, I fear I’ve not done justice to the enormity of this report. I really would encourage you to read the summary conclusions and one or two of the case studies. Too many of the quotes are simply heartbreaking or infuriating, often both.
Elsewhere in the paper, global stocks have rebounded following assurances by the US and UK governments that deposits would be protected should there be further bank collapses which pose a risk of contagion.
In the comment pages, Baroness Casey has written about the four things the Met must do now to restore public trust and the concept of policing by consent. While Nimco Ali says we are still not angry or worried enough about the Public Order Bill.
And finally, this sounds like a story from one of those fake showbiz news generators, but I’m assured Roman Kemp is gutted after accidentally eating a Creme Egg worth £10,000. Who wouldn’t?
