Victims’ stories Squeezed resources, a toxic culture, violence and cover-ups

The Casey review has unearthed a slew of alarming stories exposing misogyny, homophobia and racism inside the Metropolitan police.

‘We’ve looked at the figures. Force isn’t being used enough’

A Metropolitan officer, G, described a disturbing session where a group of new officers were brought together and shown numerous examples of video footage where force had been used against the guidelines of “proportionate, legal, accountable and necessary”, but were presented as being examples of good practice and the proportionate use of force.

One example included footage of a Taser being used on a man who was in hospital, wearing a hospital gown and not presenting any sign of danger.

G spoke about her experience of working on a Sapphire team investigating rape and other sexual offences, and the resourcing issues they faced. She told the review that the unit’s freezers, which held and preserved evidence obtained from victims and survivors of sexual violence, including swabs, blood, urine and underwear, would be so full that it would take three officers to close them.

All the fridges used for rape kits were in bad shape and packed full, leading to evidence being ruined.

In the heatwave in 2022, G said, one freezer broke down and all the evidence had to be destroyed because it could no longer be used.

‘I lost consciousness. He raped me’

A was a victim of domestic and sexual abuse at the hands of a fellow Met officer during a longterm relationship, the report says. On one of her first postings, she met her abuser, X, and they started a relationship.

The abuse escalated significantly and A was regularly attending work clearly distressed, with bruising on her wrists and face. She says the abuse was an open secret on their team but few wanted to speak up.

“He smacked me round the face, I lost consciousness, he raped me. I had a black eye, a split lip,” she told the review.

An investigation was opened, closed and reopened, but days after the murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, a serving Metropolitan officer, A says she received an email from the Met’s directorate of professional standards saying they had decided to take no further action.

‘It’s your word against his’

L is a female officer who was sexually assaulted in the workplace on multiple occasions by a more senior male officer.

L says the officer would frequently touch her inappropriately, forcing her to sit on his lap, touching intimate parts of her body while she was getting changed in the communal changing rooms, and deliberately bruising her arms while claiming he was demonstrating “officer safety moves”.

L undertook a video interview, and a witness to her abuse provided a written account. Months later, she found out that the case had been dismissed. “It’s your word against his,” she was told, and her abuser had a “long, unblemished career in the Met”.

‘The only difference was, I was a woman’

N is an officer who has been consistently bullied across two of the Met’s specialist commands where she has been targeted for her gender and has been labelled as a “troublemaker” for calling out problematic behaviour.

Both specialist commands where N has worked are heavily maledominated and she was made to feel isolated and miserable. “I had been a police officer for longer, been in [the command] for longer … I had all the skills – I could drive, I could shoot – I could do anything they could. The only difference was, I was a woman.”

This has included things like officers ignoring her calls on the radio, rubbing her name out when she signed up for overtime, ignoring text messages and emails she sent, even when these were operational, giving her tasks no one else wanted to do, and sitting in silence when she attempted to join in conversations in the carrier vehicle or on long car journeys.

‘Just banter’

A gay female officer, known as “B”, reported a male officer after he told her his “balls were cold” and requested that she should “warm them up” while they were working together on a night shift.

She said this officer had a reputation for making other women cry with comments about their policing abilities and their bodies, and there was an unofficial rule that women wouldn’t usually work with him.

After she refused, she says the officer would no longer speak to her while they were working together other than to shout at her in front of colleagues.

B reported his behaviour and was told it “wasn’t the worst thing in the world”, and was probably just “banter”.

' I am scared of the police. I don't trust my own organisation’

E is a gay officer who has been the target of a sustained campaign of homophobia from inside the Met.

He has been subject to malicious rumours that he takes party drugs and that the only reason he has been given training opportunities or favourable postings is his sexual relationships with senior officers.

E has seen evidence of WhatsApp groups of officers joking about stopping and searching him off duty and using homophobic language. When E complained about his treatment, he says the Met’s response was to brush it off. “I am scared of the police. I don’t trust my own organisation,” he told the review.

' You have to try and be invisible as a black woman’

H, a black female officer, described a misogynistic workplace culture where colleagues were “sex-obsessed” and would openly grade female colleagues and members of the public on their appearance.

H herself says she was sent to work with a male officer who was known to like young black women. She says he was an “awful character, committing lots of sackable offences” but seemed to be unsackable.

H describes an occasion where she was told her hair looked like she had been in an “electricity socket” 10 minutes after she had taken a shower.

“You have to try and be invisible as a black woman,” she told the review.