The Metropolitan Police crisis has become the norm since a London police officer murdered 33-year-old Sarah Everard. Confidence in law enforcement has been deeply shaken, and the problems are evidently decades old. And with the new boss they are not solved.
She still has a reputation like Donnerhall. Scotland Yard is regarded worldwide as an authority for enlightenment and incorruptibility – for example because of hunts for murderers like Jack the Ripper or the investigation of the legendary Great Mail Robbery. But the reality is very different for the Metropolitan Police, as the London police are actually called.
Rather, a culture of misogyny and corruption is ingrained in the police force, according to an investigative report released Wednesday by regulator HMICFRS. “It’s too easy for the wrong people to join the police force and stay there,” says HMICFRS Inspector Matt Parr.
Londoners’ confidence in their Met has plummeted in recent years. The Bobbys, the friendly nickname of the British security police, with whom tourists like to pose, are deep in the crisis. The negative highlight was the kidnapping, rape and murder of Londoner Sarah Everard in March 2021 by an officer who used his service card for the crime. The outrage was huge, the man was sentenced to life imprisonment.
But the top has still not gotten its 30,000 members under control. In December, two police officers received prison sentences for taking photos of corpses and sharing them in chats. On Monday, an officer was sentenced to 22 months in prison for stealing money from a surrendered purse. On Wednesday, two men – one active, the other former police officer – were each sentenced to twelve weeks in prison. They had exchanged racist and misogynist messages in a chat group that Sarah Everard’s killer belonged to. Had measures been taken earlier to improve pre-employment controls, people like the Everard killer would have had a much harder time getting a job as a police officer, HMICFRS points out in the current report.
Inhuman chat posts and grabbing someone else’s wallet – what may sound banal reveals a misunderstood cadre spirit for experts. It’s Mark Rowley’s job to clean up the agency and improve its image. The new chief of the Met Police succeeds Cressida Dick, who was fired by London Mayor Sadiq Khan after several scandals under her watch. But Rowley faces a Herculean task. There are more than 500 unsolved burglaries – per day. Only one percent of reported rapes ever end up in court. “A sense of lawlessness and impunity haunts the country and a sense of crisis has gripped the police force,” the Telegraph newspaper recently said.
The conservative British government is happy to point out that it has hired thousands of new police officers across the country. But the fact is that just a few years earlier, she had also cut thousands of jobs. “A lot of experience has been lost,” former London police officer Clifford Baxter told the Telegraph. Morale is low, and older civil servants in particular see their remaining service life as a prison sentence. “They say, ‘I’ve got five more years to go, two more years,'” Baxter said.
But the problems within the Met are years old, an independent investigation has found. It was a pattern and not an isolated case that allegations of sexual misconduct against Sarah Everard’s killer were ignored. Since 2013, less than 1 percent of officers accused of at least two standards violations have been fired. However, an estimated hundreds remained in service – despite allegations of corruption or sexual harassment.
Studies showing that black police officers are 81 percent more likely to be disciplined than white officers indicate ingrained racism. Blacks are also disproportionately targeted as suspects outside of the Met, as Amnesty International has criticized. Commissioner Rowley has already started here. He recently had more than 1,000 young black men removed from a police list of suspected gang members. They never belonged there.
