London police force is institutionally racist, misogynistic, homophobic, report finds

The Metropolitan Police in the UK capital London have been found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic in a damning report led by Baroness Louise Casey.

In one of the incidents highlighted, a Muslim police officer said that he found bacon inside his boots in his locker but did not tell anyone at the time out of fear of reprisals.

A Sikh officer had his beard cut and another had his turban put into a shoe box.

One black police officer was called a “gate monkey” and another was asked if he got where he was because he was black.

The report was commissioned by the Met after Sarah Everard was abducted in 2021, raped and murdered by police officer Wayne Couzens.

It details sexual assaults and a bullying culture. Junior staff were urinated on in the showers as part of an ‘initiation ceremony’.

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Black officers are 81 per cent more likely to be in the misconduct system than their white colleagues and one in five Met employees reported personally experiencing homophobia, according to the report.

During the heatwave last summer a freezer broke down and the evidence inside was destroyed and alleged rape cases were dropped.

Baroness Casey told Radio 4 that the Met Police are “completely in denial” about misogyny, racism and homophobia and that they missed multiple opportunities to reform.

Casey said that leadership teams in the Met have been in denial for decades and have systematically failed to stamp out discriminatory and bullying behaviour.

She said of David Carrick, the serial rapist and former police officer who worked for the Met, that “there were at least nine occasions where he was on somebody’s radar, and no one put it together.”

In response, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: “Today is without doubt one of the darkest days in the history of our almost 200-year-old Met Police service.”

Baroness Casey said that not enough had changed since the 1999 Macpherson report, which followed the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence and found the Met to be institutionally racist.