"The internal review, commissioned by the Met from the consultancy HR Rewired, concluded that bias, racial stereotyping and inequity were woven through the force's recruitment, promotion and grievance processes, affecting Black staff specifically. The review's report, 30 Patterns of Harm: a Structural Review of Systemic Racism within the London Metropolitan Police Service, warned that the Met's ambition to become an anti-racist organisation was being undermined by its own internal culture."
"The review found that performance systems rewarded familiarity over fairness, with Black staff given coded feedback such as not quite ready or be a bit friendlier and penalised for naming racism, seen as a reputational risk. Complaints of racism were often recast as banter or personality clashes, protecting perpetrators and leaving those who spoke up accused of playing the race card or being too sensitive."
"It comes two years after Louise Casey's review, commissioned after the murder of Sarah Everard, which found the Met institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic but treated racism as part of a wider cultural collapse. By contrast, the HR Rewired review describes anti-Black racism as baked into institutional design and diagnoses the Met's HR (human resources) systems themselves as part of the problem. The Met promised a two-year follow-up to assess progress since the Casey review; this was due in March 2025 but has not materialised."
An internal review by HR Rewired found bias, racial stereotyping and inequity woven through Metropolitan Police recruitment, promotion and grievance systems, disproportionately affecting Black staff. Performance systems rewarded familiarity over fairness and produced coded feedback such as "not quite ready" or "be a bit friendlier," while staff who named racism faced penalties and reputational risk. Complaints of racism were often reframed as banter or personality clashes, protecting perpetrators and undermining complainants. The three-month review ran from May to July 2025 and produced an unpublished companion guide. HR Rewired diagnosed anti-Black racism as embedded in institutional design and HR systems, and a promised March 2025 follow-up has not been delivered.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]