Met Police Culture Makes Racial Harm ‘Inevitable’

Published: 07 November 2025. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online.

An internal review of the Metropolitan Police has found that racial harm inflicted on Black communities is not accidental but “institutionally defended,” revealing deep-rooted cultural and structural barriers that protect the force from meaningful reform. The report, authored by Dr. Shereen Daniels and published on Friday, provides one of the most damning indictments yet of Britain’s largest police service, concluding that racism is embedded in its very design and governance.

The document, titled 30 Patterns of Harm, examines internal Met documents and testimonies from officers, unions, campaigners, and affected families. Its findings expose an institutional culture that perpetuates racial bias while shielding itself from accountability. “Anti-Black outcomes in policing are not random. They have been built in,” the report states. “And they have been named, again and again, by families in grief, frontline officers, unions, activists, whistleblowers, campaigners, and formal investigations.”

Dr. Daniels told The Guardian that her study marks the first comprehensive internal review into “anti-Blackness” within the Met that focuses on the institution as a whole, rather than on isolated incidents. “The report examines the institution itself, showing how the Met’s systems, governance, leadership, and culture produce racial harm, whilst simultaneously protecting the institution from reform,” she said. “This is not an account of individual incidents but a diagnosis of the structures that make racial harm a consistent recurring pattern.”

The report’s findings come two years after Louise Casey’s 2023 inquiry, which also branded the Met “institutionally racist,” though Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley rejected the term, claiming it was politically charged. Daniels directly criticises Rowley for this stance, arguing that his reluctance to accept the term “institutional racism” undermines accountability and allows harmful structures to persist. “This is how clarity is framed as political,” the report asserts, “and the power to name harm is surrendered to institutional comfort.”

A central focus of Daniels’ review is the Met’s controversial use of stop and search powers. The report concludes that these powers inflict sustained harm on Black communities, observing that “suspicion is the starting point” for the force. It states, “The Met doesn’t wait for wrongdoing. It waits for justification,” adding that the tactic effectively turns public spaces into “checkpoints” where “blackness itself is treated as probable cause.”

Force and coercive tactics, the report finds, are used disproportionately against Black people, reinforcing a pattern of mistrust between communities and officers. These findings echo decades of criticism, from the 1999 Macpherson Report on the Stephen Lawrence case to more recent investigations into racism and misogyny within the Met. Daniels said the organisation has developed an “advanced repertoire” for avoiding genuine reform, often responding to scandal with rhetorical pledges of change but little substantive action.

In 2023, BBC undercover footage revealed racist and misogynistic behaviour among officers at Charing Cross police station, prompting dismissals and disciplinary measures. Yet Daniels insists such incidents are symptoms of a much deeper institutional problem. “Charing Cross is not an anomaly,” she said. “It is a product of the Met’s culture itself and the way it is designed.”

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, now three years into a five-year term in which he has promised “wholesale reform,” acknowledged the review’s conclusions, calling the findings “powerful” and conceding that “further systemic, structural, cultural change is needed.” In a statement, Rowley said: “I asked for a review focused on the Met and Black communities which challenges us to go further in becoming an actively anti-racist organisation. London is a unique global city, and the Met will only truly deliver policing by consent when it is inclusive and anti-racist.”

Rowley pointed to initiatives such as A New Met for London and the London Race Action Plan as evidence of ongoing reform. “The level of trust in the Met that Black Londoners report is improving – by 10% in two years – but still lags behind others,” he said. “Our expectation is that leaders will drive this change with their teams and they will be held accountable. When it comes to any individual discrimination, including racism, our commitment is clear: we are continuing to deliver the largest corruption clear-out in British policing history to remove those who do not belong.”

However, the National Black Police Association (NBPA) responded sharply, accusing Rowley and his leadership team of perpetuating the very culture they claim to be reforming. “Only two years ago, Baroness Casey laid out the same pattern of abuse, denial, and harm,” the NBPA said. “Yet instead of progress, we have seen the situation grow worse, with trust eroding and confidence among Black officers, staff, and communities continuing to decline. The commissioner has created an echo chamber around himself, surrounded by individuals who reassure him that progress is being made while maintaining the very structures that enable institutional racism to persist within the service.”

City Hall also weighed in, with a spokesperson for London Mayor Sadiq Khan stressing that the findings reveal enduring systemic failures. “It is clear that there are still systematic and cultural issues within the force that have not been tackled,” the statement read. “The mayor is clear that Sir Mark and his senior leadership need to reframe their approach to accelerate the pace of cultural reform and deliver the necessary structural change across the force.”

For many campaigners, Daniels’ report underscores the grim continuity of institutional racism in the Met — a problem that has persisted despite decades of public outcry, policy reviews, and promises of reform. The findings suggest that progress will require more than new initiatives or public statements; it will demand a fundamental reengineering of leadership accountability, transparency, and community trust.

The question, Daniels argues, is no longer whether the Met can acknowledge the existence of institutional racism, but whether it can dismantle the mechanisms that make racial harm inevitable. “This entire body of work demonstrates how institutional racism operates in practice,” she writes. “It traces how racial harm becomes built into systems, behaviours, and leadership norms that normalise discrimination and protect the organisation from consequence.”

As the Met faces renewed pressure to deliver real change, one truth remains: without confronting the institutional design itself, the cycle of racial harm — built, defended, and normalised — will continue.