New Met Police commissioner vows to be ‘ruthless’ in rooting out racist and misogynistic officers
The new Metropolitan Police commissioner has vowed to be “ruthless” in rooting out racists and misogynists from the force’s ranks.
Sir Mark Rowley refused to say whether he thought Britain’s largest force was institutionally racist, but admitted it has a “real problem with race”.
Speaking to journalists at New Scotland Yard on Tuesday, he said he was “not interested in using labels that have been kicked around by different people to mean different things”.
“Racism is a systemic issue that we have been too weak in tackling, it’s got too much of a hold in corners of the organisation,” Sir Mark added.
“I’m going to be ruthless about rooting out racism and the other bad behaviours, I’m going to confront the systemic issues that have allowed it to prosper in a way it shouldn’t have done.”
He was speaking days after meeting the family of an unarmed Black man, Chris Kaba, who was shot dead by a Metropolitan Police officer following a car chase earlier this month.
The force previously committed to rooting out racism following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, but they were followed by a series of scandals revealing racist WhatsApps between officers.
Police currently only have the power to seize personal mobile phones and search private communications in criminal investigations, rather than those into misconduct breaches.
Sir Mark said there was “an argument to say policing should be able to reach further” but that changes to disciplinary processes to ensure police are not “forced to retain” unsuitable officers were more important.
He acknowledged that “ghastly incidents” such as the murder of Sarah Everard and cases involving misogynistic officers have dented public trust.
“We’ve let the public of London and the good majority of the workforce down,” he said.
“These cases that have been oozing out over recent years are really toxic and damaging and awful.
“We need to have a deep, hard look at ourselves and say ‘are these just inevitable? Every big organisation has a few problems that emerge’, or is it worse than that? In my view it is much worse than that.”
Public trust was one of the factors that saw the Metropolitan Police put in special measures by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in June.
But a damning report published last week showed it was also missing targets for answering 999 and 101 calls and needed to improve the way it investigates crime, protects vulnerable people and supports victims.
The watchdog reveals that almost 14,000 people wanted by the Metropolitan Police for crimes including violence and sex attacks were on the loose, many for significant periods of time.
Asked what had caused the decline in performance and standards, Sir Mark said: “I’m not interested in trying to unpick previous decisions or events, I wasn’t here for the last four years and I don’t want to comment on the calls that people made or how that went.”
He was a Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner and the head of UK counter-terrorism policing, serving under Dame Cressida Dick as commissioner before retiring from policing in 2018.
Sir Mark said that one of the key missions in his first 100 days in his new post would be a blitz on wanted offenders.
