Louise Casey says Met Police must accept institutional racism finding

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The author of a damning report on the Metropolitan Police says the force cannot continue until it accepts its findings on institutional racism, homophobia and misogyny.

In an interview aired at the launch of the black-led watchdog group, the Alliance for Police Accountability (APA) in London, Louise Casey said: I did not lift institutional racism out of the air in my report. I was very careful to be absolutely sure that it was true. And if I hadn’t found it, I would say that.

I went to the Met for the murder of Sarah Everard. And I think they thought I wouldn’t find so many race issues, but potentially homophobia and misogyny issues. And what became really clear…is that as an institution, they didn’t look to see what the connections were. I think that shows an institutional failure.

The Casey Review was commissioned after a litany of scandals in recent years, including the murder of Sarah Everard by on-duty police officer Wayne Couzens in March 2021, a series of rapes by former Met officer David Carrick and the search at nude of a 15-year-old black schoolgirl wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis.

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Its findings echo the 1999 Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which also called the force institutional racist.

Despite accepting the general findings of the report, Met Commissioner Mark Rowley has been criticized for refusing to accept the word institutional to describe his force’s failures.

It’s not a label. I describe what the evidence tells me, that’s a description… That’s the objective reality, Casey pointed out.

She added: If you don’t accept this, you can’t move on.

Casey said she finds it sad that it takes a white person to give credence to a criticism of policing that black communities have had for decades, adding that that says something in itself.

Hold the police accountable

The APA was created by groups and figures from the Black community and aims to transform policing, promote a new public health approach to serious violence, and empower Black communities. He pledged to create a nationwide network of community-led police watchdog groups.

Mina Smallman, whose life was turned upside down in 2020 when her daughters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, were murdered in a satanic ritual and photos of their murder scene were shared by the font in a whatsapp group.

Smallman told openDemocracy that trust in the police is at an all-time low in black communities.

There are knife crimes that go unreported now, she said. Young black boys, young innocent boys, innocent girls are being stabbed and shot. And people in the local community know who it is, but they fear for their lives. To work with the police, you have to trust them. And we don’t.

For the former priest and teacher, the solution to the public’s lack of trust in the police is for people with lived experience of discriminatory policing to come together and draw the map of police reform.

Former police commissioner and founding member of the Black Police Association, Leroy Logan told openDemocracy: We’re finding it’s harder to convince people to work with the police. ‘Cause they think, what’s the point? And that plays out in terms of violence.

The police have a bit of a uselessness for some communities, especially young people. And they think what’s the point of reporting crimes if they can’t protect me? I am a victim of a muscular police, what can they do for me?.

For Logan, the issue of trust has been raised by the black community since the Windrush generation. But they have not been heard for many decades. Until Macpherson, and now the Casey magazine. It’s like, welcome to my world, he says.

Because of the experiences of women and girls. People from the LGBTIQ community and even people of the Islamic faith who have suffered from Islamophobia at the hands of the police, more and more people are starting to have it.

Logan, who has spent more than 30 years on the force, said when it comes to reform he doesn’t think the police are capable of marking their own duty.

In a success-oriented organization, failure is not an option and they will not be objective. You just can’t allow them to do it themselves, he continued.

Smallman echoed this and said: Because you showed you couldn’t organize, because you couldn’t get it when we told you, we educated, focused people of color, now we’ll show you the map. And we’re going to say, that’s what you have to do.

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