Anti-black discrimination systemic in Met
The Metropolitan Police force has a structural problem with “systematic racism”, an independent report into anti-black harm within the force has warned.
review looked at Met’s systemsleadership, management, and culture, and concluded that racial harm within the force was “perpetuated through a repeated institutional sequence.”
The author of the report is Dr. Shereen Daniels said racism and “anti-blackness” are systemic “institutional design” within the agency.
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the force was aware of the scale of the challenges, and London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said the pace of cultural reform needed to pick up. The National Black Police Association said no steps had been taken to resolve the problems.
The review, commissioned by consultancy HR Rewired, concluded that dark-skinned Met staff were labeled as “confrontational”, while lighter-skinned employees were more likely to receive empathy and tolerance.
Dr Shereen Daniels said systemic racism “is not a matter of perception”, adding that “real accountability starts with specificity”.
“The systems that enable racial harm against Black people also enable other types of harm. Confronting this is not an act of exclusion, but a necessary foundation for safety, justice, and justice for all,” he said.
The report was based on more than 40 years of evidence showing how racism shaped the Met’s relationship with black communities and affected black officers and staff.
In communities, this means people with darker skin are more likely to be perceived as suspicious or aggressive and “the use of force is more easily authorized,” the report said.
Attention was also drawn to the “adultification” of black children; Here, children are perceived as more adult-like and grown-up, and their vulnerabilities are belittled and their actions are criminalized.
Baroness Lawrence said discrimination “needs to be recognized, acknowledged and confronted at the Met”, adding that racism was the reason her son was murdered and the reason police “could not find all his killers”.
He added: “The police must stop telling us that change will come while we continue to suffer. This change must happen now.”
Baroness Lawrence says racism ‘needs to be recognized, acknowledged and confronted at the Met’ [Reuters]
Lawrence family lawyer Imran Khan KC likewise said the report’s conclusions were “a bit of a surprise”, adding that Sir Mark Rowley should resign if he did not “recognise, approve and accept” the report’s findings.
He added: “This report reveals with shocking clarity that the time for talk is over, that promises of change can no longer be believed or trusted.”
The report is the latest to highlight racism in Britain’s largest police force. Louise Casey’s 2023 review He concluded that the Met – appointed after the murder of Sarah Everard – was institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.
Reviews decades ago criticized discrimination within the Met. 1999 Macpherson report He described the force as “institutionally racist” after the mishandling of Stephen Lawrence’s case.
Earlier this year, BBC secret shooting He saw Met Police officers calling for immigrants to be shot and reveling in the use of force.
Many civil servants have been dismissed since then. Sir Mark Rowley vows to be ‘ruthless’ Elimination of officers unfit to serve.
Sir Sadiq Khan’s spokesman said the diagnosis in the report was “conclusive”.
“The mayor is clear that Sir Mark and his senior leadership need to reshape their approach to accelerate the pace of cultural reform and deliver the necessary structural change across the force,” they said.
“There must be zero tolerance for all racism within the Force and a lasting transformation of the Met culture must be achieved.”
‘Culture of denial’
Andy George, president of the National Black Police Association, said Friday’s report was the latest in a long series of reviews that “highlight the same issues over and over again.”
“There’s a culture of denial, of dismissal, of waiting for almost all the lights to come on, and as soon as the lights go out, everything goes back to normal,” he said. BBC Radio 4’s Today program on Friday.
He criticized Sir Mark’s response to the report: “He said the same thing in Baroness Casey’s review, he said the same thing after Panorama… words are good, we don’t see any action to back it up.”
Following the publication of the latest report, Sir Mark Rowley said: “London is a uniquely global city and the Met will only truly police by consent when it is inclusive and anti-racist.”
He added that the force would “follow up by identifying and addressing the root causes of patterns of discrimination that emerge in our operational work and within the organisation”.
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