Today Louise Casey has published her report into the Metropolitan police – and it makes for damning reading. The review was commissioned in the aftermath of the rape, kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Met PC Wayne Couzens in March 2021. Baroness Casey was appointed by the Met to lead an independent probe of its culture and standards of behaviour. She has today concluded that it can no longer be trusted to police itself because of ‘systemic and fundamental’ issues. Below are five key takeaways from Casey’s review.
Women abandoned by the Met
The Met has continued to throw the protection of women ‘to the side’ even after Sarah Everard’s murder. ‘I have asked myself time and again, if these crimes cannot prompt that self-reflection and reform’ she wrote then what will it take?’ Baroness Casey says a ‘boys’ club’ culture was rife in the police and that force could be dismantled if it does not improve. Evidence of the Met’s failure to protect women was found in both its handling of cases and the treatment of women within its own ranks.
Sexism was so rife that officers did not even hide it when Casey’s team visited them, with women being spoken over and put down in meeting. Her report concluded that women were subjected to unwanted sexual attention from the beginning of their careers; a third of those surveyed in the Met reported personally experiencing sexism at work.
Rape ‘legalised in London’
One officer said the detection rate – the proportion of cases where a suspect has been identified – for rape is so low that it has basically been legalised in London. They said: ‘If you look at our performance around rape, serious sexual offences, the detection rate is so low you may as well say it’s legal in London. It’s kind of reflective of how we treat and view our female colleagues. You get victim blaming, looking at a situation and not believing [them].’
The report found an ‘endemic culture of disbelieving victims’ of rape and sexual offences and ‘a toxic work environment’ for officers investigating those cases. Many victims described feeling ‘gaslighted’ by officers who ‘invalidated their feelings and that what they had experienced was not a crime’.
One example of the Met’s failure to take such crimes seriously was found in the sloppy handling of evidence in the sexual offences unit. Broken fridges and freezers were used to store rape kits; a lunchbox was found in the same fridge as rape samples, contaminating evidence. When one fridge broke in last year’s heatwave, all the evidence in it had to be destroyed, with a number of alleged rape cases being dropped.
The Met is obsessed with its damage limitation
Casey reported that ‘perception and optics’ in the Met is prioritised over responding effectively to problems, with good leadership substituted for spin. There was a ‘lack of curiosity and defensive response’ to scandal, with ‘senior officers’ celebrating when the public fallout from a high-profile damaging case was less than expected.
And while the Met’s senior leadership team responded to Everard’s murder by launching a ‘Not in my Met’ campaign to encourage whistle-blowers, officers and staff were telling each other to ‘protect yourselves’ by deleting WhatsApp. Firearm officers used the term ‘Landslide’ to warn others in a compromised social media group – the same code word used if an officer finds an explosive that looks like it will detonate. Officers would then immediately leave the group, delete its contents and create a new group under a new name.
Elite units among the worst
Casey’s report specifically attacked the ‘deeply troubling, toxic culture’ in the Met’s specialist firearms command, known as MO19. This unit displayed a photoshopped poster in its common area which showed female firearms officers carrying mops, irons and kettles instead of weapons. The review was told of a ‘number of sexual misconduct issues in MO19 indicating a clear pattern of male officers being temporarily moved off the command after allegations were raised, only to have the decision overturned, or be reinstated by a more senior officer shortly after.’ It also heard of a training desk where ‘men hold competitions on how often they can make their female students cry.’
And while officers on sexual offence units suffer burnout rates worse than those of frontline medical staff during Covid, those in specialist units are blowing cash on unnecessary fripperies. In MO19, there was ‘excessive spending on unnecessary, high-end equipment and kit, such as tomahawk axes and unusable night vision goggles which turned out to be useless in London’s street-lit environment.’ Armed police officers ‘game the system’ to cash in on extra overtime and other bonuses. The parliamentary and diplomatic protection unit, in which Wayne Couzens and David Carrick served, is a ‘dark corner where poor behaviours can easily flourish’ known as ‘overtime command’ which officers join to top up their pensions.
Casey recommends that specialist teams should be formed to deal with rape and sexual offences and make their domestic abuse service ‘more victim centred’. She also advised that the parliamentary unit should be disbanded and reformed to ensure an ‘absolute reset’.
Discrimination rife within its ranks
The Met was found to be rife with discriminatory bullying, including incidents where a Sikh officer had his beard trimmed as a joke and a Muslim officer had bacon placed in his shoes, something which left the officer in question ‘horrified’ but scared to report it. Black officers are also 81 per cent more likely to find themselves in Met’s misconduct system than their white colleagues.
And Casey’s review found that one in five lesbian, gay and bisexual had experienced homophobia at work. One gay officer experienced sustained bullying and told Casey’s team that he was scared of his own colleagues. This is not just concerning because of the impact it has on the Met’s own officers; there are concerns such attitudes prejudice the police’s investigations. Two years ago, Helen Ball, the then assistant commissioner of the Met, insisted that homophobia played no part in the failures of the Stephen Port serial killer case – even when the bodies of three young gay men were dumped in the same graveyard. Such assurances will be much harder to stomach in future, knowing what we now do about the Met.
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