A recent review has concluded that Britain’s largest police force is in need of independent oversight after revealing the institution’s lengthy history of misogyny, homophobia, racism.
The review was conducted by Baroness Casey of Blackstock, who suggested that Scotland Yard cannot be trusted to monitor itself, owing to "systemic and fundamental" issues, including a degenerate culture and an insufficient response to the abduction, rape, and ultimate murder of Sarah Everard by a serving officer, according to The Times.
Consequently, Casey has proposed that the Metropolitan Police is in dire need of independent oversight and specialists to monitor the institution, noting that the force should be broken up if it cannot quickly accomplish reforms.
Casey and the Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, suggested that they could not rule out the possibility that there are still predators lingering within the institution’s ranks like Wayne Couzens, Everard’s killer, and sex offender David Carrick.
A disturbing detail that Casey included in her report is that the Met’s own officers have even conceded that they would not want their own relatives to come into contact with other members of the force. Casey went on to mention that many stripes of discrimination are "baked into the system."
Casey’s report found that the Met was fostering a bullying "boys’ club" where predators were allowed to flourish with "too many places to hide," women within the force were consistently "traded like cattle" and relocated to varying units depending on which of the male officers found them attractive, and the investigations against women were so abysmal that there were broken refrigerators that held rape victims’ samples, which subsequently had to be thrown out.
The review also found that the Met, which has a budget of £4 billion a year ($4.891 billion), has consistently prioritized its own reputation over the needs of the public, according to The Times.
Casey reportedly noted that up to 50 percent of women do not trust law enforcement. This statistic apparently comes after the murder of Everard, where officers were told to delete incriminating material from WhatsApp groups in order to "protect themselves."
However, Rowley said that he accepted Casey’s "diagnosis," saying: "We have let people down and I am deeply sorry." But he refused to admit that the issues within the Met is "institutional" since the term is both "political and ambiguous."
Home secretary Suella Braverman vowed to hold Rowley accountable to usher in "a wholesale change in the force’s culture," according to The Times.
