The Met Police has optimism bias; it has allowed an imbalance to grow between well-resourced specialist units and a denuded front line. Instead of a focus on the basics it does short term projects and campaigns. The Met has a culture of ‘not speaking up’; it does not easily accept criticism; it has a ‘we know best’ attitude. The Met’s deep seated cultures need to be tackled. These were among the findings of a 360-page report by Baroness Louise Casey.
The report set out that the Met has ‘failed over time to ensure the integrity of its officers’. The systemic and fundamental problems in how the Met is run include poor people management. Sergeants and inspectors don’t have the time or tools to manage officers; Human Resources has been outsourced; and ‘predatory and unacceptable behaviour has been allowed to flourish’. The report said that ‘scandals involving the Met and the Met’s response – playing them down, denial, obfuscation, and digging in to defend officers without seeming to understand their wider significance – combined with this loss of trust, are strong indicators of fundamental problems.’
In more detail, Public Protection Teams investigate serious crimes such as child abuse, rape and serious sexual offences, domestic abuse, and stalking. Public Protection has been actively de-prioritised, according to the report. Although the Met knew it wasn’t doing a good enough job on these crimes, it made a strategic decision to turn Public Protection into a job that ‘anyone can do’. “It moved the investigation of these crimes into the BCU [Basic Command Units] structure, while simultaneously removing the vital infrastructure and resources from BCUs needed to tackle these crimes effectively,” the report found. This was for financial reasons, Baroness Casey found; due to ‘overall savings the Met needed to make’.
The Met continues to say that only a tiny minority of officers display discriminatory behaviour, the report said. But its survey of Met officers and staff found a different picture: “Officers of colour recounted the daily indignity of discrimination and wrongdoing.” Nor is overt racism a thing of the past, the report said.
On ‘a deeply troubling, toxic culture at MO19, the Metropolitan Police Service’s Specialist Firearms Command; the reviewers found three types of leaders: those who fuel the culture; those who go to MO19 to gather experience for promotion and leave quickly; and ‘those who bravely attempt to challenge the culture’ of a ‘boys’ club’ and who are however ‘overruled, isolated and side-lined’, and ‘warned off’ making complaints for the sake of their careers. Senior officers for example look the other way at overtime ‘rackets’; and hotels are used ‘to reward officers for hard work’.
Despite publication of the Macpherson report in 1999 after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, that famously stated that the force was institutionally racist, the Met has ‘remained largely white and largely male’, the review found.
Previous Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick appointed Baroness Casey in October 2021 to lead an independent review of Met culture and standards of behaviour after the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer. The review began in February 2022 and Baroness Casey brought out an initial report in October. The Home Affairs Committee of MPs is questioning Baroness Casey today.
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Elizabeth Gardiner, CEO at Protect described the report as absolutely damming for the Met Police, ‘with whistleblowers courageously coming forward and highlighting abuses of power, sexual abuse, and more wrongdoing and misconduct from officers. Some of those whistleblowers also suffered retaliation from the Met, which is unacceptable’.
Protect (previously called PCAW) provides a confidential advice line for those ‘blowing the whistle’ on wrong-doing in their workplace. She added: “The experience that ‘nothing happens’ when misconduct occurs, dissuades officers and staff from reporting misconduct when they see it. In fact, we heard that supervisors and managers are actively dissuading their staff from reporting misconduct, therefore institutionalising mistrust in the system and undermining the Met’s ability to use the misconduct system to set and uphold professional standards.
“It is vital that every police force has an effective whistleblowing culture so that staff feel their concerns about serious misconduct will be dealt with. It is positive to see the Met create more reporting lines for concerned officers and staff to raise whistleblowing concerns, it is though a sad state of affairs that allowing anonymous reporting of wrongdoing is a welcome step forward. This will only take the Met so far – good organisations will measure how many whistleblowers are happy to come forward in confidence, rather than anonymously. It is so much harder to investigate anonymous concerns, and riskier for the whistleblower who may find it difficult to demonstrate that any retaliation is due to their whistleblowing.”
For the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) its chair Martin Hewitt acknowledged that the review ‘contains truly awful details and systemic failings’. He said: “I am confident that Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley’s leadership team and the committed, professional majority of officers and staff will succeed in turning the failings around and create the police service London deserves.
“All police chiefs have committed to change to become actively anti-racist. Equally we want a police service that is anti-misogynistic, anti-homophobic and anti-discrimination of any kind. The review reinforces once again the urgency of our current mission across policing to lift the stones and root corrupt individuals and unacceptable behaviour out of policing, alongside delivering the long term, sustainable improvements to standards, vetting and misconduct processes we have promised. We expect to be judged on the results the public and our people see.
“I share the Commissioner’s view the report must be a catalyst for making policing better, not pillorying the good majority of police officers and staff.”
For the rank and file body the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) National Chair Steve Hartshorn, said: “The report has raised many serious issues that cannot be ignored and need to be properly addressed if officers can have confidence in the system in which they work and the public can once again have confidence in policing.
“The weight and seriousness of the findings demonstrate that rightly, the focus now should be the fundamental changes that need to be undertaken to improve our service for the public and our members.
“Culture change is desperately needed across all forces to tackle these grievous issues, not just within the Met. This starts from the top through directive, ethical leadership. The Police Federation of England and Wales will play its part working with chiefs across the 43 forces to reflect and take action on the recommendations the report has identified based on its conclusions.
“We must nurture a culture of learning and development, including better training for Professional Standards Departments, to stamp out toxic attitudes and behaviours. The vast majority of officers come into the police service to protect the public and they act with integrity and respect.”
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: “The evidence is damning. Baroness Casey has found institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia, which I accept. She has described the Met as defensive, resistant to change and unwilling to engage with communities.
“As Mayor, I’ve already acted to put the Met on a path of far-reaching systematic and cultural reform, with the appointment of a new Commissioner and leadership team who acknowledge the scale of the problems and are committed to change. But clearly much more needs to be done, and fast.”
Picture by Mark Rowe; outside Stratford, east London police station on bin day.
