Louise Casey’s report into the Met Police reveals a culture of institutional racism, sexism and homophobia and that whistleblowers are not welcome.
The report notes: “The prevailing culture in the Met does not encourage reporting of wrong-doing, rather those who experience it fear the consequences of being ostracised, moved or removed for speaking out.”
Elizabeth Gardiner, Chief Executive, Protect said:
“The Casey report is absolutely damning for the Met Police, with whistleblowers courageously coming forward and highlighting abuses of power, sexual abuse, and more wrongdoing and misconduct from officers. Some of those whistleblowers also suffered retaliation from the Met, which is unacceptable.
“The experience that ‘nothing happens’ when misconduct occurs, dissuades officers and staff from reporting misconduct when they see it. In fact, we heard that supervisors and managers are actively dissuading their staff from reporting misconduct, therefore institutionalising mistrust in the system and undermining the Met’s ability to use the misconduct system to set and uphold professional standards.
“It is vital that every police force has an effective whistleblowing culture so that staff feel their concerns about serious misconduct will be dealt with. It is positive to see the Met create more reporting lines for concerned officers and staff to raise whistleblowing concerns, it is though a sad state of affairs that allowing anonymous reporting of wrongdoing is a welcome step forward. This will only take the Met so far – good organisations will measure how many whistleblowers are happy to come forward in confidence, rather than anonymously. It is so much harder to investigate anonymous concerns, and riskier for the whistleblower who may find it difficult to demonstrate that any retaliation is due to their whistleblowing.” – Elizabeth Gardiner, CEO at Protect.