Met faces call to ditch toxic armed elite unit

Protection division is riddled with deep-seated misogyny, review into police standards reveals

One of Scotland Yard’s most elite armed units should be disbanded, a report into Met culture will recommend. Wayne Couzens, the killer of Sarah Everard, and David Carrick, the serial rapist, were both colleagues in the Met’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection command. Dame Louise Casey, who will publish her review into Met standards on Tuesday, will recommend the unit is broken up in order to tackle a deepseated toxic and misogynistic culture.

ONE of Scotland Yard’s most elite armed units, charged with protecting politicians and diplomats, should be disbanded, a report into Met culture will recommend.

Wayne Couzens, the killer of Sarah Everard, and David Carrick, the serial rapist, were both colleagues in the Met’s parliamentary and diplomatic protection (PADP) command.

Dame Louise Casey, who will publish her review into Met standards on Tuesday, will recommend the unit is broken up in order to tackle the deep-seated toxic and misogynistic culture that has been allowed to take hold and fester.

PADP officers provide round-theclock security for politicians, diplomats and other VIPS. They also guard government buildings and embassies.

But the Casey review, which was commissioned in the wake of Miss Everard’s abduction, rape and murder, will recommend the unit is “effectively disbanded” with all serving officers forced to undergo re-vetting.

The report will be scathing about the lack of proper supervision in PADP and will criticise the woeful lack of female officers recruited to armed policing.

Dame Louise is expected to highlight significant barriers, both structural and cultural, that are put in the way of female officers wanting to join some of the force’s elite units.

The review will recommend that all firearms officers should undergo retrospective vetting to root out anyone who should not be serving.

The recommendation is one of more than a dozen contained in the 300-page report which will make extremely uncomfortable reading for Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, and other senior leaders in the country’s biggest police force.

The review will contain numerous examples of racism, misogyny and homophobia in the Met and highlight repeated failures to tackle misconduct and illegal actions by rogue officers.

It will also attack the Met’s past defensiveness, with Dame Cressida Dick, Sir Mark’s predecessor, coming in for criticism.

Dame Louise is expected to be damning over the force’s tendency to treat problems in isolation and the failure to recognise widespread cultural issues.

One source familiar with the report’s findings said: “For too long the Met has shown an inability to spot patterns of behaviour and has treated serious issues as one-offs.

“We saw that with Couzens and Carrick and yet nobody seemed to step back and ask, ‘Why are so many offenders coming from the same unit? Do we have a problem with this unit?’”

Concerns around the culture in PADP are not new. A previous attempt to reform the unit was scrapped after long-standing officers put up fierce resistance to suggested changes.

After Couzens murdered Everard, it emerged that colleagues had nicknamed him ‘the Rapist’, while Carrick was known as ‘Bastard Dave’.

Last year, it also emerged that a number of serving PADP officers had been members of a Whatsapp group that had shared racist messages.

Scotland Yard recently announced its own review of the unit which had been due to report in the coming weeks.

But Dame Louise is expected to warn that anything short of a complete overhaul will fail to tackle the fundamental problems that exist.

Dame Louise is said to be supportive of Sir Mark and his leadership team and their efforts to drive through reform.

Sir Mark said he recognised the need for widespread reform. “We have to show people we have got a grip of it and I am not afraid of doing that,” he said.

Sir Steve House, the former acting Met commissioner, is being investigated by the police watchdog over allegations he described the bulk of rape complaints as being the result of “regretful sex”. Sir Steve, who was number two in the Met when the alleged comments were made in January last year, has emphatically denied making the comments saying he found the term “regretful sex” completely “abhorrent”.