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The Met welcomed the report and said ‘further change’ needs to happen (Picture: Shutterstock) Racial discrimination against black people is ‘baked’ into the culture at the Metropolitan Police, an independent review has found. Led by Dr Shereen Daniels, the report surveyed internal documents spanning 40 years relating to the treatment of black officers, staff and members of the public. ‘Anti-black outcomes in policing are not random’, it concluded. ‘They have been built in.’ Commissioned from the consultancy HR Rewired, the review found darker-skinned Met staff were ‘labelled confrontational’ while lighter-skinned ones were treated more leniently. Force was found to be used more often against black people than white people and that ‘stop and search converts streets into checkpoints’. The report also said the Met treats ‘blackness itself as probable cause’, an American legal term which roughly corresponds to ‘reasonable grounds’ in UK policing. Dr Daniels said: ‘The same systems that sustain racial harm against black people also enable other forms of harm. ‘Confronting this is not an act of exclusion but a necessary foundation for safety, fairness and justice for everyone.’ The Met said it ‘welcomes the report in full’ and recognises the need for ‘further change’. The report said the Met’s leadership and culture must change (Picture: Shutterstock) ‘The Met will work with partners across education, housing, and health to address the wider inequalities that intersect with policing – for example, the disproportionate exclusion of black children from school and its link to increased police contact’, the force said in a statement. ‘The Met will not stand behind shared responsibility as an excuse for in action.’ The review was requested by Met Commissoiner Sir Mark Rowley, who has previously refused to use the term ‘institutional racism’, arguing it’s vague and political. Dr Daniels used her report to criticise his stance, writing: ‘This is how clarity is framed as political, and the power to name harm is surrendered to institutional comfort.’ ‘This entire body of work demonstrates how institutional racism operates in practice,’ she added. ‘It traces how racial harm becomes built into systems, behaviours and leadership norms that normalise discrimination and protect the organisation from consequence. ‘The question is no longer whether the Met can say the words, but whether it can change the cultural, leadership and operational conditions that make those words true.’ Welcoming the report as ‘powerful’, Sir Mark pointed to statistics pointing to a steady rise in trust in the Met reported by black Londoners over the last two years but said there is ‘still much more to do’. He added that ‘more important than any survey, is hearing how deeply this report resonates with Black colleagues and communities’. ‘We remain committed to listening, learning, and acting on their concerns.’ Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk. For more stories like this, check our news page.
