The head of the Police Federation of England and Wales has said he accepts the damning findings of the recent Casey review into workplace culture at the Metropolitan Police.
Steve Hartshorn is the first head of a major police institution to publicly accept Baroness Casey’s summation that the force is institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic.
The Police Federation represents around 130,000 officers across England and Wales.
He made the comments during an interview with the Guardian newspaper, describing this as an act of leadership. He added that policing needed a “mindset shift” to move on from its issues with race.
“For me, I personally do accept the findings in the report,” he told the paper.
“I represent lots of those people that have come forward to speak. Some of my colleagues will probably not like the fact that I’m accepting there are institutional failings and biases within such a massive organisation.
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“But then many will, and [will say]: ‘Well, what’s the harm in accepting it if we understand that it’s not labelling every officer as institutionally racist, sexist, homophobic, corrupt?’”
He said that “poor practices and certain behaviours” had to change, and that police forces and their leaders needed to get better at understanding people’s negative experiences so they could improve.
He added: “Let’s accept that if we’ve made mistakes in the past, or we haven’t challenged things that are clearly inappropriate. We can do it now with pride, to say: yeah, I accept the failings but I now want to be part of a different future.”
The report collated experiences from multiple officers in the Met in the wake of two high-profile cases where serving officers – Wayne Couzens and David Carrick – had been convicted of serious cases including abduction, rape and murder.
Some shared experiences such as a Sikh officer’s beard being cut by colleagues, or making a new female officer eat a whole cheesecake until she vomited.
Hartshorn added: “There’s been clear failings in leadership … to address the very issues that should have been dealt with, and consigned to history.
“It could be argued that, yes, it manifestly has got worse because, you know, 25-30 years on, things don’t seem to improve and we’re still having these horrendous issues.
“If it’s institutional failings of racism, sexism, homophobia, that has to sit at levels of senior leadership throughout the organisation.”
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