The father of Stephen Lawrence has said the Metropolitan police’s failure to change over the last 30 years disrespects his family’s sacrifice and loss of their son.
Dr Neville Lawrence told the Guardian he did not believe Britain’s biggest force would reform, even after a blistering report this week by Louise Casey found it guilty of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia.
The Lawrence family fought for justice after the murder of Stephen, 18, at a south-east London bus stop in 1993 by a racist gang. They won a public inquiry, which in 1999 first labelled the Metropolitan police as institutionally racist.
Lawrence said: “We went through hell and back years ago. All the things coming out now were said so many years ago. They have disrespected our sacrifice and the loss of Stephen.”
Casey’s report said discrimination was “baked” into the Met, and its commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said that while accepting her findings about widespread discrimination, he would not use the term institutional racism, claiming it was ambiguous and political.
The Met commissioner vowed that this time the Met would radically change.
Lawrence, 81, said: “They are not going to do anything about it. They are the law; they think they are above everyone else.”
He said the Met had a deep and long history of ignoring facts about their shortcomings, having been the subject of numerous critical official inquiries and reports: “If you go to the doctor and he gives you medicine, and you go home and put it on the shelf, how is that going to make you better? These people are ill. They have to take their medicine.”
Lawrence said he thought the Met would say the right things when the heat was on. “You can say anything you want when you think people want you to say it. But later you sit back and you do what you normally do.”
Casey described as “hollow” Rowley’s reasons for refusing to accept the description of his force as institutionally misogynistic, homophobic and racist. Lawrence agreed: “What is it then, if not institutionally racist? Let him give the name.”
Thirty years on from Stephen’s death, his father said: “Why are people still saying the same things about them?”
Lawrence said the Conservative government had let the police get away with poor behaviour: “These people have been in power for 13 years. They have not been able to produce a good home secretary.”
After Labour came to power in 1997, it commissioned the Macpherson inquiry, which began hearings in 1998.
After the murder, police falsely claimed they had faced a wall of silence from the community. Some of the suspects were almost immediately repeatedly named to them, but for a fortnight no arrests were made.
Police acted only when Nelson Mandela, who was on a visit to Britain, met the Lawrences and publicly backed their struggle to shame the Met.
Lawrence said: “For the last 30 years, my life has been turned upside down because of the behaviour of the police. When I was growing up in Jamaica, I thought the Metropolitan police was the best in the world.
“When my son was murdered, they squandered all the good luck they had from all the people who came in the day after and named the people. They had all the evidence and they did not arrest the suspects until Nelson Mandela spoke.”
After the 1999 inquiry, Lawrence watched in dismay as police promises of reform came to little. “There are some good officers in there, but so many bad officers, it makes it impossible.”
He said he himself was stopped by police, as were family members. “People I know say they are too scared to call the police – even former Met officers I know.”
Police believe Stephen was attacked by a gang of five to six white youths. It took until 2012 for two of them, Gary Dobson and David Norris, to be convicted of his murder.
The detective whose innovative investigation led to the cracking of a supposedly impossible case, Clive Driscoll, was let go by the Met, despite wanting to hunt down the remaining murderers.
Lawrence, 18, was murdered on 22 April 1993, as he and a friend waited for a bus in Eltham, south-east London. The youths shouted racist abuse and rushed towards them.
Lawrence’s friend, Duwayne Brooks, urged him to flee, shouting, “Get up and run, Steve.” But by then Lawrence had been caught by the white group, which “swallowed” him up through its “weight of numbers”.
Stephen’s mother, Doreen Lawrence, said the Met was “rotten to the core” earlier this week, in the immediate aftermath of the Casey report.
Asked to comment directly on Neville Lawrence’s key points, the Met did not. It defended the commissioner’s stance on not using the term institutional racism – a finding from the Casey inquiry – and pointed to Rowley’s words earlier this week: “I understand her use of the term institutional but it’s not a term I use myself.
“I’m a practical police officer and I have to use language that’s unambiguous and apolitical. That term means lots of different things to different people and has become politicised in recent debate over the last decade or so.”
