The London Metropolitan Police have failed to adequately protect the public from officers who abuse women, an independent report by Baroness Louise Casey has revealed.
The 363-page review published on Tuesday pointed out that “The Met has not protected its female employees or members of the public from police perpetrators of domestic abuse, nor those who abuse their position for sexual purposes.”
“Despite the Met saying violence against women and girls is a priority, it has been treated differently from ‘serious violence.’ In practice this has meant it has not been taken as seriously in terms of resourcing and prioritization,” the document read.
Casey, who described the review as “rigorous, stark and unsparing” in the foreword, accused the Met of perpetuating a misogynistic, sexist, racist and homophobic internal culture inside the organization.
The report argued that there are “systemic and fundamental problems in how the Met is run” and that the problem pertaining to the force is not its size but “inadequate management.”
“The Met is run as a set of disconnected and competing moving parts, lacking clear systems, goals or strategies. It runs on a series of un-coordinated and short-lived initiatives, long on activity but short on action. Recruitment and vetting systems are poor and fail to guard against those who seek power in order to abuse it,” according to the document.
The report called for a “complete overhaul” of the Met and a “new approach to restore public trust and confidence.”
The review underlined that the task should be implemented by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Home Office to “create a radically improved new London Metropolitan Police Service.”
Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said that the force “fully accepts” the report’s findings and is eager to act on them. “I’m sorry we’ve let you all down, and we will fix this,” Rowley added, referring to a “turnaround” plan to address the problems.
Last year, then-Met Commissioner Cressida Dick told Casey, a House of Lords member, to lead the review following the murder of Sarah Everard by then-serving Met Police officer Wayne Couzens in March 2021.
In late September 2021, Couzens received a life sentence without the possibility of parole after he admitted to abducting, raping, and murdering Everard after carrying out a fake arrest on the grounds of her breaching COVID-19 laws.
Everard, 33, vanished on March 3, 2021 as she walked home from a friend's house in south London. Her body was later found 80 miles away, burned and dumped in a pond in the woods in Kent.