Analysis
Louise Casey’s report on the Met police: the fall
of a British institution
Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent
Analysis: Metropolitan police again found to be
institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic – and in need of radical reform
Met police found to be institutionally racist,
misogynistic and homophobic
Tue 21 Mar 2023
00.01 GMT
Here we all
are again.
The venues
change, as do the decades, the people who chair the inquiry differ, as does the
Metropolitan police commissioner vowing to act.
About a
quarter of a century ago, in a cake box pink building in south London where he
held hearings, the evidence he heard led Sir William Macpherson to conclude the
Met was institutionally racist.
The former
judge concluded this at least in part explained why the killers of Stephen
Lawrence had escaped justice.
Then,
unlike now, the then commissioner Paul Condon accepted the label.
This time
it is even worse: the Met is again found to be institutionally racist, sexist
and homophobic, and Louise Casey says it should also accept the finding of an
earlier inquiry in 2021 that it is institutionally corrupt.
It may be
an understatement to say this is a cataclysmic disaster that has befallen the
Metropolitan police, the people it serves, the trust it has squandered and the
bullied and overworked staff repeated leaders have let down.
Lady
Casey’s report details the fall of a British institution, tumbling harder than
any organisation at the centre of national life has managed before, and one
that is so crucial to society.
It is not
just a London issue. Not just because the Met has national functions such as
counter-terrorism, but because its size makes it about one-quarter of policing
in England and Wales.
Its
repeated scandals, as Casey details, its bungled response or cover-up, is
buffeting forces across the country, dragging down trust and confidence even
hundreds of miles from the capital. “It’s always the Met,” is a refrain among
other chief constables, and their tolerance of their fellow chiefs in London is
thin to nonexistent, where once there was support. And they have made the Home
Office aware of the drag effect of the better resourced London force’s
inability to clean up its messes, and generate new ones.
Crime and
policing will be a key issue in next May’s London mayoral election, and general
election. Polling for the Home Office, seen by the Guardian, already shows a
high fear of crime, and low confidence much will be done about it.
The fall of
the Met came and accelerated during a time when a series of reforms meant
police were supposed to be under more scrutiny and face more accountability
than ever. Even if the Met leadership was deficient, we should never have got
even close to this dire position.
Several
organisations have questions to answer about whether acts of omission or
commission played a part in Scotland Yard squandering public trust. Now on
certain measures trust is at 50%, when in 2017 it was 17% higher. As one senior
Met insider said: “It is a hard swing to happen to an institution so quickly.”
Those with
questions to answer include the London mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime –
first under Boris Johnson when he was mayor, then under Labour’s Sadiq Khan and
his deputy for policing, Sophie Linden.
The current
mayor may have earned some redemption by pressing the Met to change and ousting
Cressida Dick as commissioner. But also among those charged with holding the
Met to account were a succession of Tory home secretaries. Unique among forces
the Met has two political bosses.
His
Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary was late placing the Met in special
measures, instead under its previous leader, Sir Tom Winsor, praising the Met
and condemning the force’s critics after it waded into mourners for Sarah
Everard on Clapham Common after her murder by a Met officer. Winsor also
praised Cressida Dick.
The
Independent Office for Police Conduct faces constant claims of being too lax
about allegations of Met wrongdoing, though its report on the Charing Cross
police station hate messages helped end Dick’s commissionership.
Anyone
watching the London Assembly’s police and crime committee is more likely to
hear praise for the Met than a well thought out and well researched question,
with the occasional exception of the Green party members.
Denis
Healey’s line that being attacked by Geoffrey Howe was “like being savaged by a
dead sheep” is a pretty accurate description.
Casey notes
in her report: “The system as a whole does not hold or deliver real
consequences where failures persist.”
Casey
places the primary blame on the Met’s past leadership, who condemned external
critics, intimidated internal ones into silence, and reassured the public that
everything was all right.
Can Sir
Mark Rowley, who came out of retirement to start his commissionership in
September turn the Met around and avoid being the last commissioner of the Met
as we know it?
Both he and
his deputy, Dame Lynne Owens, served previously at the top table of the Met,
and say they will reflect on why they did not see more of the signs.
Among
senior policing sources there is an increasing view that Rowley’s stated hope
to turn the Met around within the five years of his commissionership is an
understandable aim, but if he merely stops the bleeding he will have done
amazingly well.
“It is not
achievable in five years,” said one senior insider. “This is a 10-year game.”
There is
talk that if in a year to two years the Rowley plans are not showing results,
the issue of whether the Met continues in its current form and size, starts to
move to the foreground.
To reverse
the fall of the Met, Rowley – a maths graduate – will need to reengineer the
gravity of history.
Because
past attempts to get the Met to accept it needs to radically reform, and then
to get them to actually do it, have ended with today’s damning and depressing
report by Casey.
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