Met sorry for anti-gay bias Letter admits past failings

Scotland Yard has apologised to the LGBTQ+ community for past failings, in what campaigners have hailed as a historic first they hope other police forces around the UK will follow.

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, acknowledged in a letter to Peter Tatchell, the prominent gay activist that, while police had to enforce the law when homosexuality was criminalised, the way it was sometimes enforced had “failed the community” – a fact that persists in the “collective memory of LGBTQ+ Londoners of all ages”.

He added: “The Met has had systems and processes that have led to bias and discrimination in how we have policed London’s communities and treated officers and staff, over many decades.”

Tatchell, below, called the apology a “groundbreaking step forward” that “draws a line under past Met persecution”. “Officers raided gay bars, clubs, insulting LGBTs as ‘poofs’ and ‘queers’. They gave the names and addresses of arrested gay men to local papers, which led to some being evicted, sacked and beaten. We are not asking the police to apologise for enforcing the law, but for the often illegal and abusive way they enforced it.”