Scotland Yard has launched its latest steps to try to rebuild trust with London’s black community, which the Met police commissioner acknowledged had been let down for many years.
Mark Rowley said “there remains a long way to go and there is a lot more work to do”, but that the force’s race action plan was a step in the right direction.
It includes a new stop-and-search charter designed with the help of black communities and intended to reset how the procedure is carried out.
Tensions over stop and search have included the treatment of two black athletes, the Team GB runner Bianca Williams and her partner, the Portuguese sprinter Ricardo Dos Santos.
Two Met constables were sacked in October 2023 after a disciplinary panel found their actions during a “highly distressing” stop and search amounted to gross misconduct.
Trust in the force was also damaged after a 15-year-old black girl known as Child Q was strip-searched while on her period at her school in Hackney in 2020. An overhaul of the force’s policy on intimate searches of children to increase the “threshold and oversight, ensuring they only occur when necessary and proportionate”, is also part of the plan.
The Met says it wants to better represent the communities it serves and is working to recruit and retain a more diverse workforce. All new recruits are being trained to understand the experience of black Londoners and other communities across the capital, according to the force.
Disparities in the Met’s misconduct system are also being tackled, while new workshops to improve promotion rates have helped to raise pass rates for black officers from 68% to 75% since 2021.
Updates on the progress of the plan will be given twice yearly. The aim is for the Met to become “a truly anti-racist and inclusive organisation”, Rowley said.
“Black Londoners have been let down by the Met over many years and while we continue to take steps in the right direction, there remains a long way to go and there is a lot more work to do.
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“Action, not words, will rebuild trust in our service, so we must now remain focused on delivering real change that is seen and felt by our communities and our workforce. We are changing our systems, our processes, our culture and our leadership. We are better understanding and acting on disproportionality wherever it exists.
“We are working more closely than ever with communities we’ve let down to build a service that delivers for all of London. To achieve this critical change once and for all will take time, but I am determined that we will continue to strengthen our relationship with black Londoners – whether that be members of the public or our own colleagues – and renew the principle of policing by consent.”
