Met accused of insulting black people with shake-up of anti-racism strategy | Metropolitan police

The Metropolitan police has been accused of insulting black people and mocking the pain it inflicts on them after announcing it wanted to incorporate its anti-racism strategy into a wider anti-discrimination programme.

The Met said the programme, which included gender and sexual orientation, would increase its chances of better serving groups it had failed to do in the past.

But last year’s report on the Met race found that it was harming black people, said academic Dr. Shereen Daniels said the organization lacked the will to stamp out bias and warned it was going backwards.

Daniels and others said the new plan risks weakening the agency’s anti-racism commitment, which is already under fire for being too little, too late.

Speaking to the London police panel, Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley denied the new plan was about moving away from the race focus that has been a problem for the Met for decades: “One of those key areas of action will be around black communities.

“Another will definitely be about respect for LGBT communities, another will be about respect for gender.

“So I think all of these issues are important, but doing it in a systematic way, recognizing the intersectionality and complexity of the workplace, will be critical.

“But it’s not about being non-specific and untargeted, it’s the opposite. It’s really about being intentional. Where are we doing crosscutting actions and where are we doing specific actions?”

Rowley also said that DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion policies, are “increasingly questioned nationally and internationally” and subject to “volatile and polarized public debate.” In the US, President Trump attacked them, and in the UK, the Reform Party also attacked them.

The commissioner added: “If you are not an inclusive organisation, you cannot police by consent, especially in a city as complex and globally connected as London.”

Daniels said: “Abandoning the race is shameful and humiliating to those harmed.

“Rebranding to be inclusive means the Met avoids confronting its organizational design. It is insulting and makes a mockery of the experiences that black Londoners, police officers, staff and volunteers have had to endure for decades.”

Daniels’ report, called 30 Harm Models, was published in November and commissioned by the Met. This came shortly after an undercover BBC report filmed at a London police station found police officers to be racist and misogynistic.

Daniels’ report found that the Met’s “racial harm” to black people had been “institutionally defended” and that its leadership and culture had shielded the power from real change. It concluded that the force’s design “makes the continued repetition of racial harm inevitable.”

He said he had not met the commissioner since the report was published and had decided he could no longer work with the Met, and that the Met had repeatedly asked him for help.

Said Daniels: “People tell me he doesn’t care. I disagree. This is not a commissioner who takes racial discrimination and racial harm seriously.”

“It looks like they’re kicking the ball into the long grass. These are stalling tactics.”

Rowley denied that the Met was institutionally biased after a 2023 report by Louise Casey found that the Met was institutionally homophobic as well as biased against ethnic minorities and women.

“We went back five years, maybe they wouldn’t have cared,” Daniels said.

He said the Met was busy “reshaping the truth” and police chiefs’ claims that more research was needed, such as why black people were more likely to be stopped and searched, were a stalling tactic: “They already know, they were told in my report to Macpherson Casey. [into Stephen Lawrence in 1999] and Scarman [into the Brixton riots] In the 1980s.

“They have 50 years of reports.”

A Met document sent to London’s police board said the plan could bring benefits. But he added that moving the race action plan “into a broader strategy could risk losing focus on the most intransigent issue for MPS: anti-Black racism.” [Metropolitan Police Service] has been going on for decades, and it is important to understand how MPS can reduce this risk.”

The Met said it would now consult on the change and said there had been increases in confidence from black communities since Rowley began as commissioner.