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London police officers at a vigil to remember Sarah Everard, who was raped and murdered by a Metropolitan Police Service officer in 2021, in London, March 13, 2021. (Mary Turner/The New York Times) Written by Megan Specia
London police officers routinely made jokes about rape and exchanged racist messages, according to a report from England’s official police watchdog that detailed a pattern of misogyny and bullying in the force, the latest blow to an embattled service that has faced intense scrutiny in recent months.
The findings reflected a troubling culture within the London Metropolitan Police Service, according to the report released Tuesday by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, the police watchdog, which made more than a dozen recommendations to tackle the problem. It said the episodes it detailed were not isolated ones or the work of a few “bad apples.”
The report comes amid growing calls for increased scrutiny of the force after the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old London woman, by a Metropolitan Police Service officer in March 2021 highlighted broader concerns about misogyny within policing, and violence against women and girls.
“The behaviour we uncovered was disgraceful and fell well below the standards expected of the officers involved,” Sal Naseem, the police watchdog’s regional director, said in a statement, adding that the “issues are not isolated or historic.”
Naseem said that the watchdog welcomed current efforts to root out problematic behaviour and attitudes from the police force, including a continuing formal independent review of the standards and culture within the service, but “more is required.”
“Our recommendations focus on the identified cultural issues and aim to ensure that those who work for the force feel safe with their colleagues, and that communities feel safe with those whose job is to protect them,” Naseem said.
The Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement that the actions of the police officers in central London that the report detailed do “not represent the values” of the force.
The report was the result of findings from a series of investigations into the Metropolitan Police Service that uncovered evidence of bullying and discrimination within its ranks. They began after a complaint alleging that an officer had sex with a drunk person at a police station, but soon grew to encompass many more issues.
The investigations were initiated in 2018, long before the national outcry over policing that followed Everard’s death, but have since taken on new resonance.
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