London Mayor slams 'lethargic, defensive and arrogant' ex-commissioner

Sadiq Khan points finger at Cressida Dick for Met Police failings: London Mayor slams ‘lethargic, defensive and arrogant’ ex-commissioner in wake of damning report exposing culture rife with sexual misconduct and racism

Report found officers getting away with sex misconduct, racism and misogyny
Baroness Casey’s report was commissioned in wake of Sarah Everard’s murder
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said officers in question should all be sacked
Sadiq Khan left no doubt that he blamed Cressida Dick for all of the problems

Sadiq Khan has blamed former Met Police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick for the failings in Baroness Casey’s report – branding her ‘lethargic, defensive and arrogant’.

The London Mayor was speaking following the ‘horrific’ report into police standards that said officers were getting away with sexual misconduct, racism and misogyny.

The review by Baroness Casey, commissioned after the murder of Sarah Everard by Couzens, laid bare the rot at the heart of Scotland Yard.

But Mr Khan expressed confidence Dame Cressida’s successor, Sir Mark Rowley, would be the reforming commissioner the capital needed.

He said: ‘Here’s the difference, you don’t have a commissioner in Sir Mark who is lethargic, defensive or arrogant.

Mr Khan branded Dame Cressida Dick ‘lethargic, defensive and arrogant’ in his big broadside

London Mayor Sadiq Khan left no doubt that he blamed Cressida Dick for all of the problems

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said officers in who were unsuitable should all be sacked

‘You have got a commissioner with a plan to address those issues and with a plan to win back trust and confidence,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One.

‘The Metropolitan Police Service leadership, that starts with the commissioner, didn’t take the issues Sir Mark is now taking action on as seriously as they should have done.’

The police chief has only been in the job for a month and has conceded his force is riddled with hundreds of officers ‘behaving disgracefully, undermining our integrity’.

Baroness Casey’s report found scores of officers remained in the ranks despite being accused of appalling crimes, including sexual assault, domestic abuse, corruption and fraud.

The report was commissioned in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens

The review by Baroness Casey laid bare the rot at the heart of Scotland Yard in full detail

It concluded ‘systemic racism’ and discrimination in the force’s disciplinary system created a culture where ‘anything goes’ and officers could not be sacked.

Sir Mark has called for an overhaul of the system, which would require a change in the law.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is understood to be considering bringing the new rules into place.

But the commissioner’s pledge to sack more officers was too simplistic for some, who called for a full-scale statutory enquiry into the force.

Hundreds of ‘criminals in uniform’ are getting away with sexual misconduct, racism and misogyny in Britain’s biggest police force, its commissioner admitted yesterday

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley (pictured) said the officers involved were ‘undermining our integrity’ – and should be sacked

ELEVEN misconduct allegations … but officer remains in his job

Sir Mark Rowley has said he was unable to get rid of officers if a legally qualified chairman in a misconduct hearing decided they could keep their job.

Among the shocking cases uncovered was an officer facing 11 misconduct cases involving abuse, sexual harassment and assault, fraud, improper disclosure of information and distribution of an explicit image of himself. The officer received a formal sanction in relation to the first allegation of harassment and assault but was not dismissed.

By then, six more cases, including sexual assault and serious assault, had been raised.

After a formal sanction, four more cases were brought and the officer received another formal sanction but was not dismissed. He is still serving.

Scotland Yard chief Sir Mark Rowley was unable to get rid of officers if a legally qualified chairman in a misconduct hearing decided they could keep their job

One officer who has had six misconduct cases against him for oppressive conduct and harassment, neglect of duty, leakage of information and discriminatory behaviour linked to race and faith has remained in post. The discrimination and harassment allegations were linked to social media, including a Whatsapp group. The officer has received two final written warnings in ten years. He received a ‘no case to answer’ decision for three of the cases and one case remains open. He, too, is still serving.

An officer with seven misconduct cases against him including corrupt practice, sexual assault and domestic abuse, has kept his job. A month after his third case, he was involved in a domestic assault, but a chairman decided this did not constitute misconduct. Seven months later, an allegation of sexual assault and domestic abuse was made which resulted in no action.

In total, the officer has received management action three times, reflective practice once and ‘no case to answer’ three times.

Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, said: ‘What the Casey Report shows very clearly is that there is a case to answer over institutional misogyny and racism in the Met.

‘Yet the response from Met Police Chief Mark Rowley demonstrates the scale of the problem exactly. His focus on sacking the officers in question, whilst the right response to those cases, misses the wider point.

‘The culture of the Met permits not only those officers to escape justice but for racism and misogyny to flourish unchecked. Without addressing this, the Met will simply have to sack hundreds of officers a year because nothing will really change – it amounts to sweeping the problem under the rug, at the expense of women and people of colour.

‘Nothing short of an independent, statutory inquiry which can compel witnesses and evidence will be able to address this. I have been calling for a statutory inquiry into misogyny in the Met – on the same scale as the Stephen Lawrence inquiry – for years.’

The report found:

Officers are virtually unsackable, with only 5 per cent of all misconduct cases ending in dismissal;

Some officers have faced 19 misconduct probes and one accused of 11 matters including sexual harassment, assault, fraud, leaking information and sending naked images is still in post;

Racism in the ranks results in black officers and staff being 81 per cent more likely to be accused of misconduct than their white colleagues;

Sexual degradation of female officers and bullying is encouraged by some managers;

About 20 per cent of officers accused face multiple misconduct cases, yet less than 1 per cent are fired.

Sir Mark apologised as he said the ‘painful’ report ‘shames us’. He said it was ‘hard not to shed a tear’ at how some female and black officers had been treated, admitting the report had left him angry and ‘upset’.

Currently, only about 30 to 50 officers are dismissed a year from the force. Figures show that just 5 per cent of almost 9,000 Met officers and staff accused of misconduct since 2013 have been sacked.

Of the 1,809 who faced more than one misconduct case, just 13 were fired – less than 1 per cent.

More than 500 officers were involved in three to five misconduct probes, 41 officers faced more than six and some stood accused of as many as 19 matters.

‘This leaves many officers and staff in the Met to conclude that discriminatory behaviour is in fact not a breach of professional standards and adds to the sense that ‘anything goes’,’ Baroness Casey said.

The former Whitehall troubleshooter condemned the Met’s misconduct system as ‘not fit for purpose’, saying it has been infected by ‘systemic racism’ for a decade, with black officers and staff 81 per cent and Asian officers 55 per cent more likely to be accused of misconduct than white colleagues.

Sir Mark called for an overhaul of the system, which would require a change in the law, something which is being considered by Home Secretary Suella Braverman (pictured)

The scandals that have rocked the capital’s force

OPERATION MIDLAND

In 2014 the notorious investigation was sanctioned by Dame Cressida Dick, then a high-ranking officer at Scotland Yard.

The disastrous inquiry into spurious VIP child sex abuse allegations saw innocent men, including the late Lord Brittan and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, pursued by the force.

Several men died, with reputations tarnished, before the allegations were disproved.

NICOLE SMALLMAN AND BIBAA HENRY MURDERS

In June 2020 two officers were tasked with guarding a crime scene where sisters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, had been stabbed to death.

Officers Deniz Jaffer, 47, and Jamie Lewis, 33, took photos at the scene in Wembley, then shared them in two WhatsApp groups. They were each jailed for two years and nine months last December.

SARAH EVERARD MURDER

In March last year, 33-year-old marketing executive Sarah Everard was abducted, raped and murdered by serving officer Wayne Couzens. The force’s officers were accused of ‘manhandling’ women at a Clapham Common vigil staged ten days after her disappearance.

DANIEL MORGAN INQUIRY

In June last year a report into the unsolved 1987 murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan accused the Metropolitan Police of ‘institutional corruption’.

STEPHEN PORT INVESTIGATION

An inquest jury ruled in December that failures by Yard detectives contributed to the deaths of a serial killer’s three final victims. Stephen Port killed four men in their 20s by giving them overdoses of the date rape drug GHB at his east London home in 2014 and 2015. The inquest found police failed to carry out basic checks. A solicitor for the families said the Met’s actions were driven in part by homophobia. The Independent Office for Police Conduct is to re-investigate the force’s handling of the case.

CHARING CROSS SCANDAL

In February the IOPC exposed conduct by officers based at Charing Cross police station who were found to have joked about rape, killing black children and beating their wives.

BIANCA WILLIAMS

Five officers are to face a gross misconduct hearing over their stop and search of Team GB sprinter Bianca Williams in 2020. She and her partner were stopped in west London. Nothing illegal was found and the couple, who are black, claim they were racially profiled.

Black probationary officers are 126 per cent and Asian officers 123 per cent more likely to be forced out compared to their white colleagues, who often escape sanction for lying during vetting and failing exams.

The report also lifted the lid on the tolerance of predatory sexual behaviour within the ranks.

In one unit, 47 per cent of female staff said they had experienced sexism and misogyny in the past six months. In another borough, 22 per cent of public protection officers and 37 per cent of emergency response officers had been the victim of unwanted sexual advances or touching.

One female officer recalled ‘being told that if you fell asleep on a night shift you couldn’t claim there was no consent to unwanted sexual touching’. After one officer was convicted of an offence, it emerged that a female colleague had reported him for sexual assault but supervisors did not act.

Others told Baroness Casey of their frustration that wrongdoers went unpunished, describing the system as ‘stacked against them’. Many were discouraged to report misconduct and made to ‘feel like they were the one with the problem when they raised a conduct issue’.

One inspector said: ‘We don’t want this behaviour in the Met. If we worked for Tesco we’d be able to sack someone for less.’

Baroness Casey found that allegations of sexual misconduct or discrimination were less likely to result in a case to answer than other claims. An internal review revealed that 24 officers had been investigated two or more times for sexual misconduct and domestic abuse but previous allegations had not been taken into consideration.

The report is just the first from the peer who was brought in to look at misconduct procedures and the culture within the force after a series of scandals.

As it was published, the Home Office announced a review of the systems to sack police officers, whether forces are using powers to dismiss probationary officers, and if regulations governing the disciplinary system should be changed. Mrs Braverman said: ‘The public rightly expects the highest standards of behaviour from police officers and the vast majority meet this expectation.

‘But recently too many high-profile incidents and reports, especially in London, have damaged trust – which is unfair on the public and lets down other serving officers.

‘This cannot continue.

‘Culture and standards in the police must improve.

‘And where an officer has fallen seriously short of these expectations, demonstrable, public action must be taken.’

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