The Guardian

Fall of an institution Will Casey report spell the end for the Metropolitan police?

Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent

Here we are again. The venues changes, 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 building in south London, the evidence he heard led Sir William Macpherson to conclude that the Met was institutionally racist. The former judge found that 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 that repeated leaders have let down.

Lady Casey’s report details the fall of a renowned British institution, tumbling harder than any organisation at the centre of national life has managed before. It is not just a London issue. Not just because the Met has national functions such as counterterrorism, but also its size makes it responsible for about a quarter of policing in England and Wales.

Its repeated scandals, as Casey details, its bungled responses and cover-ups are buffeting forces across the country, dragging down trust and confidence. “It’s always the Met” is a refrain among other chief constables; 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. Crime and policing will be a key issue in May’s London mayoral election and the next general election.

The fall of the Met came and accelerated during a time when a series of reforms meant police were supposed to be under more scrutiny and facing more accountability than ever. Even if the Met leadership was deficient, we should never have got even close to this dire position.

A series of organisations have questions to answer about whether acts of omission or commission played a part in Scotland Yard squandering public trust. On certain measures it is now at 50%, whereas in 2017 it was 17 points higher. Those with questions to answer include the London mayor’s office for policing and crime – first under Boris Johnson, then Labour’s Sadiq Khan and his deputy for policing, Sophie Linden. The current mayor may have earned some redemption by pressing the Met to change, and ousting Cressida Dick as the commissioner. But also among those charged with holding the Met to account were a succession of Tory home secretaries. Unique among forces, the Met has two political bosses.

Casey places the primary blame on the Met’s past leadership, who condemned external critics, did little when internal ones were too often intimidated into silence, and reassured the public that all was all right. Can Sir Mark Rowley, who came out of retirement to start his commissionership in September, turn the Met around and avoid being the last commissioner of the Met as we know it? Both he and his deputy, Lynne Owens, served previously at the top table of the Met, and say they will reflect on why they did not see the signs.

Among senior policing sources there is a view that Rowley’s stated hope to turn the Met around within five years is an understandable aim, but if he merely stops the bleeding he will have done amazingly well. “It is not achievable in five years,” said one insider; “this is a 10-year game.” There is talk that if in a year to two years the Rowley plans are not showing results, the issue of whether the Met continues in its current form and size will move to the foreground.

To reverse the fall of the Met, Rowley – a maths graduate – will need to re-engineer the gravity of history. Because past attempts to get the Met to accept it needs to radically reform, and then to get the force to actually do it, have ended with today’s damning and depressing report by Casey.

National | Police

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2023-03-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://guardian.pressreader.com/article/281642489413563

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