In 1998, Sir Paul Condon, the then Metropolitan police commissioner, wrote a letter to the Macpherson inquiry into the response to the murder of Stephen Lawrence. “Racism in the police is much more than ‘bad apples’,” he wrote. “The debate about defining this evil … is cathartic in leading us to recognise that it can occur almost unknowingly, as a matter of neglect, in an institution. I acknowledge the danger of institutionalisation of racism. However, labels can cause more problems than they solve.”
In one sense, Condon’s words were insightful – his rejection of the “bad apple” argument strikes a contrast with Cressida Dick’s words about her own officers years later. But the fact that Dick would eventually be forced to resign amid a similarly fractious debate about problems of culture and institutional behaviour within the Met shows just how much work there is still to be done.
Dick was internally popular, but ultimately failed to convince Sadiq Khan that she would address the Met’s problems with the urgency and on the scale that was required – particularly in light of the recent Charing Cross report by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. That contained shocking details of police officers sharing racist and misogynistic messages with each other. But the sad truth is that it also revealed nothing new.
It was released after a period of consultation with the Met and related to investigations that were several years old. In April 2021, the director general of the IOPC had cause to write to the National Police Chiefs’ Council raising a concern that they were seeing cases that “may be indicative of broader cultural issues within some police forces”. The letter referred to a number of cases in which officers shared inappropriate images or content on social media that was “racist, misogynistic or homophobic”. It drew the NPCC’s attention to the fact that often the cases would start by “looking at the conduct of one officer but were then broadened to include the actions of others because inappropriate content was shared widely”.
A corresponding statement was placed on the IOPC’s website, listing examples of cases the regulator had seen since replacing the IPCC in 2018. This referred to cases in the Met, south Wales, Cheshire, Warwickshire and Kent. The highlighted Met case dated back to December 2020 and dealt with several officers receiving “final written warnings for gross misconduct after sharing text messages which contained offensive references to people with disabilities and jokes about rape, paedophilia, racism, and homophobia.”
There was very little press coverage of that letter and statement. The NPCC responded with a general commitment to “actively [work] with the IOPC to put further guidance and safeguards in place” around use of social media and messaging. There was no public outcry, and no push for the highlighted forces to respond with substantive measures they would take to deal with those problems. Yet those cases identified the same poisonous culture that allowed Wayne Couzens to continue to serve as a police officer despite co-workers nicknaming him “the rapist” due to his outrageous behaviour; and that allowed two police officers not only to take photographs of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman’s bodies, but also to share them with impunity in WhatsApp groups with colleagues.
Dick’s resignation has symbolic significance. The Met is England and Wales’ largest police force and it serves the most diverse population in Britain. Not only does it have regional responsibility, it holds national portfolios and heads counter-terrorism. The direction of policing in the Met can have a huge impact on national policing. However, substantive transformation requires more than a change at the top. It needs commitment from all levels of officers; scrutiny from the press; public engagement and demand for change; and the mandate from the Home Office. So far, frankly, those elements have not come together for a long enough period to apply the required pressure.
This is despite the fact that trust and confidence among certain groups is extremely low. In December 2021, a YouGov survey found that more than half of Britons from minority ethnic backgrounds no longer trust the police; in October 2021, YouGov found that 47% of women and 40% of men said trust in police had decreased since the murder of Sarah Everard. Instilling confidence entails a willingness to call cultural and institutional problems exactly what they are and then doing something radical about it. This doesn’t detract from the fact that many officers are in the job for positive reasons, or that some progress has been made in these areas. Engaging with criticism of an institution does not undermine it, it legitimises it and keeps it relevant. It shows a willingness to be held accountable.
Since last August, I’ve been in post as chair of the independent scrutiny and oversight board for the police’s action plan on inclusion and race. My role is to hold all 43 police chiefs across England and Wales accountable while they, with the College of Policing, develop and implement an action plan to create an “anti-racist police service” – their words. The plan focuses in particular on the experiences of Black communities with the police. By committing to it, each police chief accepts the need to deal with these problems. That acceptance reflects an acknowldgement that racial disparities are present in most areas of policing, and that conscious steps need to be taken to deal with them. The initiative was announced in June 2020; however, we’re now in February 2022 and discussions about institutional racism remain ongoing.
I hope that this resignation, and the clear gauntlet that has been thrown down by the mayor of London, will provide the next Met chief with the mandate to push for reform internally, while externally acknowledging the extent of the issue. It shows that the elected officials really do have the power to hold police chiefs to account. I hope that other chiefs will be galvanised and inspired to undertake the charge – some of them already have. Dick’s resignation marks an opportunity for us, the public, and the media to make sure police reform stays at the top of the agenda.
Abimbola Johnson is a barrister at 25 Bedford Row, and chair of the independent scrutiny and oversight board on the police’s action plan on inclusion and race
