It is the most damning report in Scotland Yard’s nearly 200-year history.
Baroness Casey criticized the Metropolitan Police, saying bullying and predatory behavior was rampant, bosses couldn’t spot rapists in the ranks and victims were made to feel like an “inconvenience”.
In excoriating detail, his review exposed how the Met lost its way.
Baroness Casey pictured arriving at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Center yesterday for the press conference on her review of the Metropolitan Police Service’s standards of behavior and internal culture
Baroness Casey’s report has established how the Met Police got lost. Pictured: stock image
CRUCIAL RAPE EVIDENCE LOST WHEN FREEZERS FAIL
Evidence from countless rape investigations has been destroyed due to broken refrigerators and freezers, the review found. A lunch box was found in the same fridge as the rape samples, an error that would have contaminated the evidence.
Forensic kits that preserve evidence obtained from sexual violence survivors, including swabs, blood, urine, and underwear, are stuffed into refrigerators so full it takes three officers to close them: one to push the door open, one to hold it closed, and one to hold the door. close. secure the lock.
All the refrigerators used for the rape kits were in disrepair, full and ruining evidence, Baroness Casey discovered. She described freezers overflowing with evidence samples, frosted or taped shut. In a heat wave last year, one went bad and all the rape victims whose samples were in that fridge were told their cases would be withdrawn.
Pictured is PC rapist and murderer Wayne Couzens, who served in the Metropolitan Police.
One officer said she had “lost count” of the number of times she had asked a colleague where the necessary evidence was before being told it had been lost.
Another officer spoke of the year-long wait for toxicology results and forensic examination of the phones. Separately, police are being told to regularly delete their WhatsApp in the wake of a series of scandals about officers exchanging vile messages with each other.
Deputy Commissioner Dame Lynne Owens admitted yesterday that she did not know how many cases had been thrown out as a result of the fridge problems.
BULLYING INTEGRATED INTO THE SYSTEM
Baroness Casey described a ‘bullying culture’ where discrimination was ‘built into the system’.
Young recruits are subjected to humiliating initiation rituals from the start of their careers, including challenges to eat and urinate. One officer was even allegedly sexually assaulted in a shower. Examples of “pranks” included bags of urine thrown at cars, sex toys slipped into coffee cups, male officers touching each other’s genitals, and an animal trapped in an officer’s locker.
A Muslim officer said: ‘I found bacon on my boots inside my locked locker. I was horrified. I didn’t want to be branded as a person who played the career card and for fear of reprisals I didn’t tell anyone at the time.’
Another recalled: ‘There have been a number of incidents where baptized (Sikh) officers are molested. An officer cut off his beard because an officer thought it was funny. Another officer had his turban put in a shoebox because they thought it was funny.
ARMED UNITS ARE THE ‘DARK CORNER’
The report said that Scotland Yard’s armored units were a “dark corner” of the force.
Baroness Casey described “elitist attitudes and toxic cultures of bullying, racism, sexism and ableism” at Specialist Firearms Command and Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command, where Sarah Everard’s killer Wayne Couzens and rapist in serial David Carrick were official.
At the ‘boys’ club’, senior armed officers have competitions to see if they can make their mates cry and put up signs in common areas showing gun officers carrying mops, irons and kettles instead. of weapons. One officer said: “It’s the most toxic, racist, sexist place I’ve ever worked in, it’s just an amazing place.”
Pictured is serial rapist PC David Carrick, who served in the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command
In one case, colleagues referred to a black guard as a “gate monkey.” Officers are also told that it’s okay to ‘color outside the lines’ – that is, bend and break the rules – because police with guns are harder to replace. The review found officers ‘game the system’ to cash in on overtime and other bonuses, wasting public money on unnecessary overseas training trips and hotel rooms. The unit is known as ‘overtime commando’ and the officers band together to pay for their weddings and supplement their pensions.
Baroness Casey said it should be closed, adding: “It’s a dark corner of the Met where bad behavior can easily flourish and is harder to detect and stop.”
A TOXIC WORKPLACE FOR WOMEN
Stories abound of young female officers being ‘traded like cattle’ and transferred to different units depending on which male officers found them attractive. A female officer recalled a colleague of hers forcing her to sit on her lap before intimately touching her and performing a sexual act while she was in the communal changing rooms. She on another occasion began to forcefully undress her while they were on duty.
When she complained, the case was dropped and she posed as a ‘troublemaker’. One official said: “The Met is a misogynistic, male-oriented environment filled with testosterone, notches on the bedposts, and conquests.” Senior officers and supervisors take advantage of women as if they were predators.
ABUNDANT HOMOPHOBIA BETWEEN THE RANKS
Nearly one in five lesbian, gay or bisexual employees surveyed said they had experienced homophobia, and 14 percent said it was once or twice a week.
A male officer was attacked on social media with homophobic slurs and malicious drug rumors.
Colleagues exchanged WhatsApp messages about stopping and frisking him while he was off duty. He told the review: ‘I’m afraid of the police. I don’t trust my own organization. I will vary the route I walk to avoid passing police officers when I am not at work.’
Baroness Casey said the force was institutionally homophobic, adding that 30 percent of LGBTQ+ employees said they had been bullied.
Pictured is Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley.
‘MANDATORY BLINDNESS’ TO INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
The review found that the force was institutionally racist and had failed to address the ‘rot’ present for many years. Black officers were 81 percent more likely to be subject to a misconduct case than white officers.
A senior official was asked openly at a large gathering in 2022: ‘Did you get where you got because you’re black?’
And one black woman told the review: ‘You have to try to be invisible as a black woman… If you complain, you get a reputation for being a problem and then supervisors try to move you to other teams.’
The 363-page report also acknowledged disproportionality: Black Londoners are being “monitored”. He concluded that there was “deliberate blindness” and that Scotland Yard’s commanders continued to fail to accept and address racism.
