Veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott has accused the Met Police of not taking the disappearance of Owami Davies seriously.
Scotland Yard are facing questions over the way they have handled the case after they issued the wrong pictures of missing student nurse Davies.
The 24-year-old from Grays, Essex, left her family home on July 4 and was last seen just after midnight in Derby Road, West Croydon, south London, on July 7.
On Aug 3, the Met Police released CCTV images from a shop in Croydon of a woman they said was Davies.
The pictures were picked up by a number of media outlets, who reported them on their websites and social media.
But the force apologised shortly afterwards and withdrew the images, saying they were not of Davies, but another woman.
Former shadow home secretary Abbott said it showed her disappearance was not treated “entirely seriously”.
She told LBC: “I think it’s fairly clear that this disappearance wasn’t treated entirely seriously.
“Otherwise they couldn’t have put up the wrong photograph. You will know, and many of you audience will know, that the Metropolitan Police are in special measures.
“This is exactly the kind of thing why they are in special measures, this kind of sloppiness, this sense that they don’t serve certain communities as well as they could and it’s all very upsetting.”
In 2020 sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were murdered in a London park. When they first disappeared the police had seemed disinterested and the family had to push them.
Later two officers were jailed for taking photos of their bodies at the crime scene, while a third was sacked for using a racial slur in messages about those photographs.
In another case, a watchdog found the Met had failed the family of a vulnerable black teenager who went missing and then was found dead. The desperate family of Richard Okorogheye, 19, were told by one call handler: “If you can’t find your son, how do you expect us to?”.
Abbott commented: “There are too many of these cases and I think the conclusion that you have to draw is that too many police officers just don’t take the disappearance of black people seriously.”
Asked if she believed they would release an incorrect image of a missing white woman, Abbott replied: “It’s hard to believe. It’s almost as if they think all black women look the same.”
It also emerged over the weekend that the police watchdog is considering whether to investigate Scotland Yard after officers came into contact with the student nurse who had been reported missing.
Five people have been arrested as part of the inquiry into Davies’ disappearance, two on suspicion of murder and three on suspicion of kidnap - all of whom have been released on bail.