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Metropolitan Police Service

Introduction

Also referred to as MPS or the Met, our content on the Metropolitan Police Service has been broken down for easier navigation:

Contacting the police
About policing
Metropolitan Police Service
LGBT+ Community Liaison Officers

LGBT+ Independent Advisory Group
Independent of MPS, a voluntary group of LGBT+ people advising on and monitoring MPS issues affecting LGBT+ people who live in, work in, study in or are visiting London.

Your rights on arrest
Police warnings, cautions and fines
Met Walk-In Police Stations
Met Police Custody Suites

Big Brother Watch
ACCOUNT (Hackney)
StreetSafe
Police stations: Are they a thing of the past?
Facial recognition

Recent damning reports about MPS

There have been several recent damning reports about the MPS including:

The Casey Review and Report
HMICFRS MPS Report 2023
Operation Hotton

Louise Casey criticises Met chief's response to damning report | The Guardian | 22 Mar 2023 | 3m 39s

Inquests into the deaths of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor

The Inquests into the deaths of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor raised serious concerns about the handling of the MPS investigations - which many say was catastrophic. In a statement following the conclusion of the East London Inquests, the MPS said, “Today, after hearing seven weeks of detailed evidence, an inquest jury has determined that Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor were unlawfully killed. They have also found that the deaths of three of those young men – Gabriel, Daniel and Jack – could probably have been prevented had the initial police responses and investigations been better. It is a devastating finding. ... And we’re also deeply sorry that there were failings in the police response to the murders."

Update | November 2023

Eight Met officers facing gross misconduct investigations over Stephen Port case | Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) | 16 Nov 2023

"We are investigating the conduct of five current and three former Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) officers following our re-investigation into how the murders of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor were originally handled.

All eight have recently been told they are being investigated for gross misconduct for possible breaches of police professional standards relating variously to equality and diversity, duties and responsibilities, authority respect and courtesy and honesty and integrity.

Five of the officers were subjects in the investigation by our predecessor the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) – three are still serving and two are former officers."

Stephen Port: Met Police officers investigated over serial killer | BBC News | 16 Nov 2023
Met officers being investigated over failings in serial killer Stephen Port case | The Guardian | 16 Nov 2023

The MPS response is a two-year plan: New Met for London 2023-25

Semantics, perhaps, but an earlier version was titled the Turnaround Plan 2023-25 would be more accurate in that we are NOT getting a NEW Met, but rather an organisation that aims to transform itself and deliver far-reaching changes in 24 months.

MPS and the LGBT+ Community

Searching the New Met for London plan for references citing the LGBT+ community:

We’ve heard the voices of those who’ve been let down by the Met. Unreservedly, we apologise. Whether you’re a woman or a member of London’s LGBT+ community, whether you’re disabled or you’re from a Black or ethnic minority background – we’ve heard the concerns you’ve raised. We're sorry, and we will change. ^{Forward (Commissioner Mark Rowley), pg 2}
"We're going to do more to support communities and people who've had their trust damaged. We'll put more people and focus into the teams protecting women and children from violence; we’ll go after predatory men who commit those crimes; we'll do more for Black, ethnic minority and LGBT+ communities and for disabled Londoners. We'll develop a new strategy that makes a meaningful difference to how we police and keep children and young people safe." ^{1. Community crime-fighting (Working with Londoners to keep them safe), pg 6}
"Baroness Casey of Blackstock was commissioned to undertake an independent review into the Met's culture and standards. We accept her findings and we're responding to them. We’ve let down the people we're supposed to protect – Black, ethnic minority and LGBT+ communities, disabled Londoners, and women – and we haven’t fixed the cultural issues
that have led to that." ^{2. Culture change, pg 7}
"Across More Trust, we’ll track levels of improvement within Black, ethnic minority and LGBT+ communities, and among women, where we know confidence has historically been low and damaged over the last decade." ^{Our Mission (More Trust), pg 12}
"We’ll also improve our ability to identify and reduce levels of disparity in outcomes achieved for Black, ethnic minority and LGBT+ communities, and for women in London." ^{Our Mission (Less Crime), pg 14}
"We’ve already introduced LGBT+ Community Liaison Officers to ensure every LGBT+ person living or working in the capital is confident to report crime, seek our help or tell us their concerns." ^{1. Community crime-fighting: Working with Londoners to keep them safe, pg 21}
"We’ll make sure communities can co-design approaches to combatting discrimination in their areas. We’ll commission research into overall crime disparity to improve our understanding of the issues facing women and girls, Black, LGBT+ and disabled Londoners, and other ethnic minority communities – using it to design interventions that are properly data-driven." ^{2. Culture change: Embedding the values of policing by consent (Spending more time listening to Londoners and acting on what they’ve told us). pg 43}

Some long-standing issues facing the Met

"Following the phone-hacking scandal of 2011, one of the problems highlighted by the Leveson Inquiry into the ethics of the relationship between the police and the media was the secretiveness and defensiveness of the Met, especially when facing criticism. Eleven years on from the Leveson Inquiry, it would seem very little has changed."
Sorry shouldn’t be the hardest word if the Met is to regain trust | LSE | 19 May 2023
"The Met’s problems do not begin and end at the top. Misogyny, discrimination, bullying and sexual harassment have been uncovered throughout the ranks of the Met in a damning report from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). This inquiry found evidence of messages between officers that were sexualised, violent and discriminatory, defended as “banter”. These included messages between officers about attending a festival dressed as known sex offenders, homophobic comments and numerous jokes about rape."
Cressida Dick was right to go. But the Met’s problems do not begin and end at the top | 11 Feb 2022
"The Met has become unanchored from the Peelian principle of policing by consent set out when it was established.” The report found a bullying culture, frontline officers demoralised and feeling let down by their leaders, and discrimination “baked into the system”
Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2023
"Just over half of Londoners perceive the Met as a reliable institution, trust in the police has eroded nationwide. Almost half of the population state they no longer trust police officers. Trust, once lost, can be hard to restore. The Casey report states that not all forces are fully cognisant of the risks these issues pose to their reputation."
Casey review: how different is the Met police from the UK’s other forces? | The Conversation | 23 Mar 2023

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