The Casey Report into standards within the Metropolitan Police has been released to reveal the force has been riddled with bullying, poor leadership and the “rotten” treatment of black people.
Baroness Dame Louise Casey said that the protection of women had been “thrown out of the window” and called the Met institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic.
The Baroness had been appointed to lead the independent review following the murder of Sarah Everard in 2021.
In the report, which was published on Tuesday, she went as far as saying that the Met may have more officers like the killer Wayne Couzens and rapist David Carrick.
“What would it take for policing to wake up that it has to be different,” Baroness Casey told a news briefing held to unveil what she described as “very grave and serious” findings.
If the force does not reform, it could face being broken up in future, she added. But who is Baroness Casey and what other cases has she reviewed?
Who is Louise Casey?
Baroness Casey is a government official working in social welfare. She grew up near Portsmouth and graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London with a degree in history.
She began her career with the Department of Health and Social Security, administering benefit payments for homeless people. She then worked for the St Mungo Association, a charity that helps homeless people. She became director of the Homeless Network in London, before becoming deputy director of Shelter in 1992.
After the 1997 election, the Labour government established the Social Exclusion Unit in December of that year, with ending rough sleeping as one of its top targets.
The Rough Sleepers Unit (RSU) was established in April 1999 and Casey was selected by Tony Blair, then the prime minister, as its leader. The RSU sought to reduce the number of rough sleepers in England by two-thirds by April 2002 and had a final budget of £200 million.
Casey was then appointed director of the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit (ASBU) of the Home Office in January 2003 and also became director general of Troubled Families. Boris Johnson, when prime minister, appointed her as an adviser to help tackle homelessness, and she was later appointed as chair of the Rough Sleeping Taskforce.
Today, she is the Chair of the Institute of Global Homelessness. She left the civil service in 2017 to help establish the institute, with the aim of delivering an international solution to homelessness across the world.
In July 2020 she was nominated for a crossbench peerage.
What other cases has Baroness Casey reviewed?
The 57-year-old was also appointed to review the circumstances and prepare a report on the spectator invasion of Wembley Stadium, London, in July 2021 when thousands of ticketless spectators broke through security arrangements for the final of the UEFA Euro 2020 football tournament.
Following the publication of a report by Alexis Jay on the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal, Casey was also appointed by Eric Pickles to lead the inspection of the children’s services at Rotherham council.
The Guardian reported on 10 September 2014: “In his written ministerial statement, Pickles says he has directed Casey to consider how the council exercised its functions on governance, children and young people, and taxi and private hire licensing.”
Baroness Casey’s report was published on February 2015 and found that the local authority’s child sexual exploitation (CSE) team was poorly directed, suffered from excessive case loads, and did not share information.
