![]() The Casey review details horrific initiation rituals and bullying of young officers, female officers, and Black, Asian and minority ethnic officers – those who are perhaps most malleable when it comes to a toxic culture, or at least unlikely to speak out against it. The Met needs intrusive workplace monitoring that includes similar tactics, including covert listening devices in briefing rooms and patrol cars, and random screenings of officers’ phones and social media. It is not unusual for private organisations such as banks to use “mystery shoppers” to monitor how their staff interact with their customers, or to implement random drug testing. To use it as a screening tool for police applicants – not to bar them if they fail, but to determine whether further enquiries are necessary – does not seem far-fetched in the current climate. It is already used within the English criminal justice system to monitor convicted sex offenders, with a claimed 80-90% reliability. To close that vital gap, they need to proactively interview the applicant’s friends, family and colleagues, and intrusively delve into their social media use.Ī polygraph could be another screening tool for prospective officers. ![]() The vetting team can find out if a candidate has convictions or debts, but they don’t really learn what a candidate thinks. In an earlier article, I wrote about how weak and passive the vetting of new police recruits is. This, according to Casey’s review, is what Wayne Couzens used to trick Sarah Everard into his car before raping and murdering her. When someone is accepted into the police, even if not a firearms officer, they are given another powerful and sinister weapon – a credit card-sized piece of plastic called a warrant card. The recently sacked Met police officer and serial rapist David Carrick apparently posed with his gun to intimidate and control women. This will need intrusive and aggressive vetting and monitoring in the workplace. And bad officers must be made to feel they are no longer in a workplace where they can speak and act with impunity. If the Met is to survive in its current form, good officers need to feel they are on the right side of history. I agree, but the way to achieve that is, first, to create an environment whereby the decent members of the Met workforce can police themselves and help clear out the toxic rubbish. Many would argue that it is the public – especially the women and people from diverse cultures living in London – who need protecting from bad officers. As one officer told the inquiry team in a chilling comment: And they are worried about losing their jobs if they rock the boat. They are afraid of their own colleagues, but also scared of speaking out about them because they fear their managers are just as bad. What stands out most to me is that the good people within the Met workforce are scared. For Rowley to quibble about phraseology, and disagree with this term because it is “political”, is a sign that he is already trying to protect the Met from external criticism – an example of the harmful and excessive hubris Casey describes. Racism and sexism by officers towards their own colleagues and the public has been allowed to flourish unchecked by the organisation. ![]() In fact, the review reveals exactly what it means for these problems to be institutional. Yet he rejects the “institutional” label to describe the Met’s problems. The Met’s commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has accepted the findings of the Casey review and acknowledged that work needs to be done. We heard similar 24 years ago when, after the incompetent investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, Sir William MacPherson reported that the Met was institutionally racist. Baroness Louise Casey has found that London’s Metropolitan police force is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.
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