Can the Met Police heal its relationship with the Black community?

A year after an independent review labelled it institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic, the Metropolitan Police's attempts to reform itself remain under scrutiny.

The Met recently announced it has scrapped its controversial violent gangs database, following claims that it disproportionately targeted Black Londoners. The gangs violence matrix (GVM), launched in 2012 in the wake of the London riots the year before, has "repeatedly" been described by the Met as a "crucial tool to prevent gang violence", said the BBC. At its peak in 2017, there were nearly 4,000 names on the list. 

However, some were reportedly added "simply because of where they lived or who they knew", said the Daily Mail. There were concerns that those on the list could wrongly face "harsher enforcement actions", while the matrix had been shown to lead to "breaches of data protection laws" and a failure to "distinguish between criminals and victims when adding names". 

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The GVM will be replaced by an existing but "adapted" violence harm assessment (VHA) to identify the capital's most violent people, the force said. But serious concerns remain about police prejudice towards ethnic minorities. This month, the head of the National Police Chiefs' Council Gavin Stephens became the most senior serving officer in the country to say that policing in the UK is "institutionally racist". 

What has happened since the Casey report?

In 1999, an inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence led Sir William Macpherson to conclude that the Met was institutionally racist. Then last year, Baroness Louise Casey's landmark report, commissioned by the Met after the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard, concluded that the force was guilty of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia. The report warned that "public consent is broken".

A year later, the Met remains in a "race crisis", said The Guardian's police and crime correspondent, Vikram Dodd. This month, Black and Asian officers called on ethnic minority recruits to "boycott the force" after the chair of the Met Black Police Association (Met BPA), Inspector Charles Ehikioya, was placed under investigation. His supporters say the gross misconduct charges against him are "trumped up". 

Ehikioya allegedly received an inappropriate message from a colleague and did not report it, which he denies. Ehikioya claims he is being targeted because he has "challenged racism and discrimination within" the force, said the i news site. 

The National Black Police Association (NBPA) has since sent a "rallying cry" to ethnic minorities "not to join the Met" in the first boycott in 20 years, wrote assistant editor Darren Lewis in the Mirror. It is clear "we still do need a diverse police force", but it is "so hard to argue the case for joining the police" given the evidence of "the culture that many Black people have warned of for years".

The president of the NBPA, Andy George, told The Voice that Met Commissioner Mark Rowley had "refused to discuss his concerns". "There has been a desire to silence dissenting voices including an attempt to weaken the Met BPA," George said.

Rowley has previously come "under fire" for refusing to "describe racism within the force as institutional". He has shown "reluctance to take key steps in addressing the issue", wrote Richard Sudan in The Voice.

What will it do next?

The Met is trying "to get its house in order", wrote crime editor Ben Ellery in The Times, as it continues to reel from a long "series of scandals". But it is also hamstrung by the lack of "powers of dismissal" for chief constables as well as a "chronic shortage" of new recruits and funding.

Baroness Casey said in her report that the force's efforts were "not good enough", though admitted more time was needed for sweeping changes. But Gavin Stephens told The Guardian that "little progress" had been made since. Stephens acknowledged that there was a need for a "fundamental redesign of national policies and practices", and that "black people should no longer experience disproportionate use of force". 

Other changes include an ongoing "recruitment drive" for Black, Asian and minority ethnic officers to better reflect London's diversity, said The Independent's race correspondent Nadine White. However, at the current rate of progress it would take nearly 50 years to achieve this, according to figures analysed by Byline Times last year. 

Ultimately, if the Met is "genuine in its desire to move forward and build trust with Black Londoners", said George, then it needs to "adequately resource" organisations like the Met BPA, rather than target them.