By Megan Specia

LONDON — London’s police force is institutionally sexist, misogynistic, racist and homophobic, according to an independent report released Tuesday (21) , the strongest condemnation yet of a department plagued by systemic problems and a severe erosion of public trust.

While the force has been under intense scrutiny for months, the report offers a damning new assessment of its inner workings and the ‘boys’ club’ culture that it says pervades it. It called for a series of changes in the force.

The report, compiled by Louise Casey, an appointed member of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the British Parliament, was ordered up after the murder in 2021 of Sarah Everard by a police officer, a case that rattled Britain and forced a spotlight onto bad behaviour within the London police. Most recently, a London police officer, David Carrick, was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against 12 women over a 17-year period that included rape and numerous charges of sexual assault.

The organization’s response to these and other scandals included “playing them down, denial, obfuscation and digging in to defend officers without seeming to understand their wider significance,” the report found.

The report found that officers were targeted by colleagues because of their religion, sexual orientation or gender. One account described a Sikh officer having his beard cut off because a colleague thought it was funny. Officers reported dehumanizing initiation rituals: Some officers said they had been urinated on, and women described being forced to eat cake until they vomited.

In one account, an officer described witnessing other officers “surfing crime reports looking for female victims who live alone, contacting them when off-duty and offering ‘support’.”

Mark Rowley, the commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, said in a statement Tuesday morning that the report must be a “catalyst for police reform” and offered an apology from the force.

“The appalling examples in this report of discrimination, the letting down of communities and victims, and the strain faced by the front line, are unacceptable,” he said. “We have let people down, and I repeat the apology I gave in my first weeks to Londoners and our own people in the Met. I am sorry.”

While the abduction, rape and murder of Everard, a 33-year-old London woman, was the impetus for the review, a number of other prominent cases, including that of Carrick, have highlighted broader concerns about misogyny within the police department.

In February 2022, Cressida Dick, then the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, commissioned Casey to conduct an independent review into the standards of behaviour and the internal culture of the force.

“This report is rigorous, stark and unsparing,” Casey wrote in the foreword to the report. “Its findings are tough and for many will be difficult to take. But it should leave no one in any doubt about the scale of the challenge.”

She also acknowledged that new leadership had arrived while the review was underway and said that they now had “a daunting task”.

“Thankfully they accept the scale of that challenge, and they deserve the chance to succeed,” adding that she hoped the report would “serve as both a diagnosis of what needs to change, and a blueprint for how to begin.”

Dick eventually resigned amid widespread criticism of her handling of the problems within the institution. In an interim report released in October, Casey outlined a number of long-standing problems in the force, including delays in resolving misconduct cases and accusations of sexual misconduct and other discriminatory behaviours that have long gone unaddressed. That early report also found racial disparity in how the cases were handled.

But Tuesday’s full report went further, putting in stark relief the reality of the issues within the force, saying that instances of racism, sexism, misogyny and homophobia were found “in plain sight.”

It noted that, “discrimination is tolerated, not dealt with and has become baked into the system” and is felt “most acutely by those who cannot hide their differences from the white male norm, particularly people of colour and women.”

In one example recorded in the report, an officer told how, “Women are viewed as inferior and not truly belonging, being judged on looks and physical assets only. Only women who are either attractive or willing to have sex with colleagues are accepted.”

In another account, an officer described how bad behaviour, particularly misogyny directed at women in the force and in the community, had been “allowed to thrive and flourish”.

“It’s a breeding ground, because of the power and control that comes with being a police officer,” the officer said.

The report also explored how strains on resources had led to stripped-back neighbourhood policing and a detrimental lack of engagement with the community as a result, noting: “The Met has become disconnected from Londoners. Their consent can no longer be assumed.”

Last year, a report from England’s official police watchdog put forth a similar assessment of the troubled force, advising that the force address “disgraceful” behaviour after that investigation found widespread bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment.

The government responded shortly after the report’s publication Tuesday, with Suella Braverman, the home secretary whose office is responsible for policing nationally, saying that Rowley and the leadership of the London police would be held to account to “deliver a wholesale change in the force’s culture.”

But she added that she was “confident that under Sir Mark’s leadership, progress is being made to reform standards and deliver common sense policing for all Londoners.”

-New York Times