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Report finds London police force to be misogynistic and racist

Metropolitan Police, London.

Black community leaders demanding immediate action to reform Britain's largest police force has coincided with an official report into the Metropolitan Police by victims’ rights and social welfare expert Louise Casey.

In her 363 page report, she describes the whole force as homophobic, misogynistic and racist. Central to her findings was the Met's failure in its duty to vet officers and protect women and children.

It was exactly that failure that prompted the report in March 2021. Wayne Couzens while a serving Metropolitan Police Officer, abducted, tortured, raped, and killed, Sara Everhart. Couzens was jailed for life.

His conviction prompted another woman to come forward accusing another Officer David Carrick convicted of raping 12 victims over 17 years.

Police Commissioner Mark Rowley has welcomed the report, but stopped short of admitting the force he leads is institutionally racist.

We have racist, misogynist and homophobes in the organization. And it's not just about individuals. We have systemic failings, management failings and cultural failings.

The reason, and I respect Louise using that term, the reason I don't use it; I think it's a very ambiguous term.

Mark Rowley, Metropolitan Police Commissioner

And the whole the report is condemning of this big organization pointing to the fact that it has lost public confidence and consent, that it has to wake up and own up to the problems plaguing it, and, engage in wholesale, across the board, reforms.

Black community leaders though, say they're concerned that any such reform may not go far enough.

This is just another report saying the same thing that's been said for decades now in this country. The Metropolitan Police is institutionally racist. Policing is harmful. It's misogynistic. It is homophobic. And for me, as a black woman, the police, the Met Police is an anti black organization, anti black racism organization.

Black Community Member

In February the charity, Inquest, found that black people are seven times more likely than white people to die after being restrained by the police.

In Metropolitan Police in London, a black person, you've got 69 chances out of a thousand to be stopped and searched. If you’re white it is 24 out of a thousand.

Black people are five times more likely to be tasered than white people. You could go on, and on, and on.

Kehinde Adeogun, Black Equity Organization

The report is a wakeup call for the Metropolitan Police.

Louise Casey says her recommendations are not to be picked from but to be implemented in their entirety. Without them, she asserts, the force may need to be disbanded.


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