Greenwich Council has voted to publicly condemn the Met Police, with one councillor saying the force is a “rotten orchard” instead of having “a few bad apples”.
The council voted to urge the Met Police to accept findings that it is “institutionally racist, homphobic, sexist and misogynistic”.
The decision comes after an independent review by Baroness Louise Casey published in March showed there was a “declining public confidence and trust” in the police force. Baroness Casey was appointed to conduct the review in 2021 following the murder of Sarah Everard.
The topic was discussed during a motion at a full council meeting on July 19. The motion, put forward by the Labour Group, called for a letter to be sent by the council calling on the Met to implement the recommendations set out by Baroness Casey’s review. It also asked for the Met Commissioner to accept the findings that the service is “institutionally racist, homophobic, sexist and misogynistic” – a suggestion Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley rejected when the report was published.
Conservative Councillor Matt Hartley said at the meeting that reading Baroness Casey’s review was a “sobering” experience. The councillor said it was “deeply damaging” that Mr Rowley has refused to publicly accept the report’s finding that racism in the Met is “institutional”, as he said to the London Assembly’s police and crime committee in March.
Cllr Hartley said at the meeting on July 19: “This is not a few bad apples, it is a rotten orchard. These problems are cultural, they are deep rooted and it’s for the commissioner to show that he understands that, and he has not yet done that.”
The motion also called for Greenwich Council to challenge the Met to work with various ethnic, youth and LGBTQ+ groups in the borough to restore confidence in policing. There has been a growing mistrust of police among some communities in London in recent years with a string of incidents, particularly in Black communities, whereby ordinary Londoners have been handcuffed and manhandled after being wrongly suspected of offences.
The Met argues its officers only stop people when they have reasonable grounds and on each occasion has justified detaining people for searches. An incident on July 21 on Whitehorse Road, Croydon saw a Black woman being arrested in front of her young son who was visibly distressed and in tears, after being suspected of avoiding paying a bus fare. The woman was later de-arrested after it was confirmed she had paid the fare. The incident has led to London Mayor Sadiq Khan calling for “an urgent explanation of what took place”. In March last year a Black man was stopped and searched in Croydon with officers claiming it was because he was wearing a coat when the weather was warm. The caretaker claimed he was being targeted as he was then stopped again a week later, again with no offences being discovered.
The high profile case of Wayne Couzens, a serving Met Police officer who kidnapped and murdered Sarah Everard during lockdown in Clapham, led to the Casey review. However another serving Met officer, David Carrick, was jailed this year for the systematic sexual abuse, rape and false imprisonment of women over several years while using his position as a police officer to control and frighten his victims.
Greenwich councillors felt that decent police officers in the borough were being “let down” by the service as a whole, given trust in police has reportedly fallen by 25per cent in the last five years in Greenwich. Labour Councillor Adel Khaireh said the system of the Met Police was broken “fundamentally” and needed to be reformed.
He said: “There were good apples there, absolutely, they wanted to make change. But it was the few that made it so rotten that nobody ever had trust within the police, and to this day I still work with young people that are alienated by police, that are bullied by police, that are treated like scum by police.”
The motion also cited the council’s disappointment in the results of the Macpherson Report on the Stephen Lawrence case in 1988. Labour Councillor Ivis Williams also said change was needed following the “unacceptable” behaviour of David Carrick and Wayne Couzens.
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The Met announced on July 18 that they had launched a new policing plan for London, with an emphasis on residents working alongside officers to shape policing priorities. The announcement for the scheme, known as A New Met for London, said that the service accepted and is responding to the findings of Baroness Casey’s report, and that the service had let down several communities in the capital including women alongside Black and LGBTQ+ groups.
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said in a statement: “Our people want to better serve the public and have been calling for change. We want the public to trust in the work we’re doing, to see how we’re fighting crime in their communities and how we’re keeping people safe.”
He added: “The data tells us that the majority of Londoners still trust us, more so than many other professions, but in recent years, confidence has fallen sharply and trust has been dented. We must repair that. We have seen serious failings, but the vast majority of our people come into work every day and do extraordinary things because they care greatly about the city and the people they protect.”
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