When he became Metropolitan police commissioner in 1972, Robert Mark said he had “never experienced … blindness, arrogance and prejudice on anything like the scale accepted as routine in the Met”. Louise Casey’s landmark report shows that nothing has changed. It refutes Cressida Dick’s suggestion that problems were limited to a few bad apples. The rot goes all the way through. Findings that the Met is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic echo those in the 1999 Macpherson report. Many hoped that that inquiry would spark a transformation in the force. This time there is greater cynicism.
The picture Lady Casey paints is damning. The Met is unmoored from its purpose and beset by scandals. Consent is “broken” and public trust has collapsed. The force is failing to do its essential job of investigating and preventing crime. The 363-page Casey report details cases of shocking ineptitude, such as evidence from rape investigations being binned after a fridge broke, and discrimination, such as stop and search being used disproportionately against black Londoners.
The Met is a £4bn-a-year public institution. It should be transparent, but instead it “sees scrutiny as an intrusion”. This widespread culture of denial and obfuscation will be an obstacle to change. Sir Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, should begin by implementing the report’s recommendations, starting with an overhaul of the vetting process. Police wield power, a fact that will always make the job attractive to those who seek to abuse it. Vetting is too limited, designed to root out applicants with links to organised crime, but not those with histories of inappropriate behaviour. The lack of face-to-face interviews means officers with racist and misogynistic attitudes are slipping through the net. Re-vetting is “perfunctory”.
The misconduct process is likewise not fit for purpose. Lady Casey’s initial findings revealed that less than 1% of officers accused of two breaches of standards had been sacked from the force since 2013. Misconduct cases took on average 400 days to resolve, and some officers were dissuaded from making allegations. One in 10 officers “should not have got through vetting”, Sir Mark has said, but he is prevented from sacking them by a requirement that misconduct hearings be led by an independent chair. Lady Casey has recommended that the government give chief constables the right to appeal against decisions to reinstate officers. Ministers should follow her advice.
Many cases of misconduct never even reach this stage because they go unreported. Unquestioning loyalty is praised above integrity, and misogyny and racism are widely tolerated. Nowhere is this clearer than in the specialist MO19 firearms unit, where the “normal rules do not seem to apply” and “toxic cultures of bullying” flourish. While the ringfenced budgets of specialist units allowed firearm officers to splurge on “any toy they wanted”, such as tomahawk axes and night vision goggles, the Met’s overall budget has been cut by 18% in real terms since 2010. The force has lost 126 police stations and two-thirds of its special constables.
Austerity has not only shrunk the Met. It has cut the force further adrift from the communities it is supposed to serve. The number of frontline staff has contracted and the value of local policing has been eroded. One solution would be breaking up the Met, subsuming specialist units into the National Crime Agency and replacing the rest with localised forces. Lady Casey has suggested that structural reforms will be necessary unless the Met can demonstrate progress on her recommendations. Unlike schools, which can be closed down, “there are no ultimate sanctions in policing”, she wrote. Given its abysmal record, it is doubtful whether the Met is capable of making the changes so desperately needed.
