Met police's culture makes racial harm inevitable', internal review finds

"The report says: Anti-black outcomes in policing are not random. They have been built in. And they have been named, again and again, by families in grief, frontline officers, unions, activists, whistleblowers, campaigners, and formal investigations. On the key flashpoint of stop and search it finds the Met causes pain in black communities and says suspicion is the starting point. The Met doesn't wait for wrongdoing. It waits for justification, it says."

"Daniels said of her report: It examines the institution itself, showing how the Met's systems, governance, leadership and culture produce racial harm, whilst simultaneously protecting the institution from reform. This is not an account of individual incidents but a diagnosis of the structures that makes racial harm a consistent recurring pattern. Daniels said the Met had an advanced repertoire to avoid change."

"The racial harm the Metropolitan police inflicts on black people is institutionally defended, with its leadership and culture protecting the force from real change, an internal review has found. The report by Dr Shereen Daniels, published on Friday, draws on internal documents and evidence, with the Met responding by accepting long-standing evidence of racism and discrimination within Britain's biggest force."

Metropolitan Police exhibits entrenched anti-Black outcomes, with leadership, culture, systems, and governance producing recurring racial harm. Institutional design and practices create predictable patterns of discrimination rather than isolated incidents. Stop-and-search routinely treats Blackness as probable cause, converts streets into checkpoints, begins from suspicion instead of evidence, and results in greater force and coercion against Black people. Long-standing evidence from families, frontline officers, unions, activists, whistleblowers, campaigners, and formal investigations has repeatedly documented these harms. Institutional mechanisms and an advanced repertoire of avoidance protect the force from meaningful reform, making racial harm likely to reoccur.

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