It may be an understatement to say this is a cataclysmic disaster that has befallen the Metropolitan police, the people it serves, the trust it has squandered and the bullied and overworked staff repeated leaders have let down. Lady Casey’s report details the fall of a British institution, tumbling harder than any organisation at the centre of national life has managed before, and one that is so crucial to society.
Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent
Here we all are again. The venues change, as do the decades, the people who chair the inquiry differ, as does the Metropolitan police commissioner vowing to act. About a quarter of a century ago, in a cake box pink building in south London where he held hearings, the evidence he heard led Sir William Macpherson to conclude the Met was institutionally racist. The former judge concluded this at least in part explained why the killers of Stephen Lawrence had escaped justice.
Then, unlike now, the then commissioner Paul Condon accepted the label.
This time it is even worse: the Met is again found to be institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic, and Louise Casey says it should also accept the finding of an earlier inquiry in 2021 that it is institutionally corrupt.
It may be an understatement to say this is a cataclysmic disaster that has befallen the Metropolitan police, the people it serves, the trust it has squandered and the bullied and overworked staff repeated leaders have let down. Lady Casey’s report details the fall of a British institution, tumbling harder than any organisation at the centre of national life has managed before, and one that is so crucial to society.
It is not just a London issue. Not just because the Met has national functions such as counter-terrorism, but because its size makes it about one-quarter of policing in England and Wales. Its repeated scandals, as Casey details, its bungled response or cover-up, is buffeting forces across the country, dragging down trust and confidence even hundreds of miles from the capital. “It’s always the Met,” is a refrain among other chief constables, and their tolerance of their fellow chiefs in London is thin to nonexistent, where once there was support.
And they have made the Home Office aware of the drag effect of the better resourced London force’s inability to clean up its messes, and generate new ones. Crime and policing will be a key issue in next May’s London mayoral election, and general election. Polling for the Home Office, seen by the Guardian, already shows a high fear of crime, and low confidence much will be done about it…
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