REPORT BLASTS LONDON POLICE
London’s police force is institutionally sexist, misogynistic, racist and homophobic, according to an independent report released Tuesday, the strongest condemnation yet of a department plagued by systemic problems and a severe erosion of public trust.
While the force has been under intense scrutiny for months, the report offers a damning new assessment of its inner workings and the “boys’ club” culture that it says pervades it. It called for a series of changes in the force.
The report, compiled by Louise Casey, an appointed member of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the British Parliament, was ordered up after the murder in 2021 of Sarah Everard by a police officer, a case that rattled Britain and forced a spotlight onto bad behavior within the London police. Most recently, a London police officer, David Carrick, was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against 12 women over a 17-year period that included rape and numerous charges of sexual assault.
The organization’s response to these and other scandals included “playing them down, denial, obfuscation and digging in to defend officers without seeming to understand their wider significance,” the report found.
The report found that officers were targeted by colleagues because of their religion, sexual orientation or gender. One account described a Sikh officer having his beard cut off because a colleague thought it was funny. Officers reported dehumanizing initiation rituals: Some officers said they had been urinated on, and women described being forced to eat cake until they vomited.
In one account, an officer described witnessing other officers “surfing crime reports looking for female victims who live alone, contacting them when off-duty and offering ‘support.’”
Mark Rowley, the commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, said in a statement Tuesday morning that the report must be a “catalyst for police reform” and offered an apology from the force.
“The appalling examples in this report of discrimination, the letting down of communities and victims, and the strain faced by the front line, are unacceptable,” he said. “We have let people down, and I repeat the apology I gave in my first weeks to Londoners and our own people in the Met. I am sorry.”