The Metropolitan police have been accused of insulting black people and mocking the pain they have caused them after revealing they want to absorb their anti-racism strategy into a wider anti-discrimination plan.
The Met said the plan, which also includes gender and sexual orientation, would increase its chances of success by better serving groups it had failed in the past.
But Dr Shereen Daniels, the academic whose report last year on race for the Met found it caused harm to black people, said the organization lacked the will to end prejudice and warned it was going backwards.
Daniels and others said the new plan risked diluting the force’s commitment to anti-racism, which was already under fire for being too little, too late.
Speaking at the London police meeting, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley denied that the new plan was intended to move away from the focus on race, which has been a problem for decades for the Met.
He said: “One of those key areas of action will be around black communities. Another will definitely be around LGBT communities, another around gender.
“So I think all of those issues are important, but doing it systemically, recognizing the intersectionality and the complexity… of the work area will be critical.
“But it’s not about becoming unspecific and unfocused, quite the opposite. It’s about being really deliberate. Where do we take cross-cutting actions and where do we take specific actions?”
Rowley also said that DEI, meaning diversity, equality and inclusion policies, “were increasingly contested nationally and internationally” and subject to “volatile and polarized public debate.” In the United States, President Donald Trump has attacked them, as has Reform UK in Britain.
The commissioner added: “You can’t do consent policing if you’re not an inclusive organisation, especially in a city with the complexity and global connectivity of London.”
Daniels said: “Abandoning the race for inclusion is shameful and insulting to those who have been harmed.
“The rebrand towards inclusivity means the Met is avoiding confronting its organizational design. This is insulting and makes a mockery of the experiences that black Londoners, police officers, staff and volunteers have had to endure for decades.”
Daniels’ report, called 30 Patterns of Damage, was published in November and commissioned by the Met. It came shortly after a BBC undercover report filmed at a London police station found officers were racist and misogynistic.
Daniels’ report found that the “racial harm” the Met inflicted on black people was “institutionally defended” and its leadership and culture protect the force from real change. He concluded that the design of the force “made it inevitable” that racial harm would continue to be repeated.
He said that since the report was published he had not met the commissioner and had decided he could no longer work with the Met, which asked him for continued help.
Daniels said: “People tell me they care. I disagree. This is not a commissioner who takes racial discrimination and harm seriously.
“It looks like they are kicking the ball into the long grass. These are delaying tactics.”
Rowley denied the Met was institutionally biased after a 2023 report by Louise Casey found it was biased against ethnic minorities and women, as well as institutionally homophobic.
Daniels said: “We’ve gone back five years; they might as well not have bothered.”
He said the Met was committed to “reshaping the truth”, and claims by police chiefs that more research was needed, for example into why black people were more likely to be stopped and searched, were a delaying tactic. She said: “They already know this, they have been told this by my report, (by) Casey, from Macpherson (the 1999 report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence which said the Met was institutionally racist) and Scarman (to the Brixton riots) in the 1980s.
“They have reports for 50 years.”
A Met document to London’s policing board said the plan could bring benefits. But he added that moving his race action plan “into a broader strategy may risk losing focus on anti-black racism, which has been the most intransigent issue for the MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) for decades, and it is important to understand how the MPS will mitigate this risk.”
The Met said it would now consult on the change and said that since Rowley’s tenure began he had gained the trust of black communities.
