The Metropolitan Police are under fire yet again in a scathing new campaign from the Women’s Equality Party launched around central London.
It followed a damning report from the police watchdog, the IOPC (Independent Office for Police Conduct) published this week which found a “disgraceful” culture of “misogyny, racism and homophobia” within the service.
The investigation – which began by looking at officers working for the Charing Cross Police Station before extending its reach – led the watchdog to conclude the offensive acts of some individuals are not actually “isolated incidents” from just a “few bad apples”, but a problem throughout the service.
In response, the Women’s Equality Party put extracts from the report of WhatsApp exchanges between two particular officers on boards across London on Friday.
In the format usually used by the police when calling for witnesses to a crime, the activists began the message by asking for help with ‘Met Office Banter’.
A message from Officer 1: “You ever slapped your missus?”
Officer 2′s response: “It makes them love you more. Seriously since I did that she won’t leave me alone.
“Now I know why these daft c***** are getting murdered by their sp***** boyfriends.
“Knock a bird about and she will love you. Human nature. They are biologically programmed to like that s***.”
This a real text exchange extracted by the IOPC during the investigation which officers dismissed as “banter”.
The board concludes: “Are you disgusted? Please phone the home secretary to demand a statutory inquiry into misogyny and radical overhaul of the police.”
The phone number of Priti Patel’s office was attached, along with the final message: “The police cannot stop violence and discrimination if they do not recognise it in their own ranks.”
The home secretary has so far refused to call for a statutory inquiry into institutional misogyny, but has acknowledged there is a “failure of leadership” behind it.
Here’s what the organisers said
Leader of the Women’s Equality Party, Mandu Reid, said: “We are tired of being told that it’s a few bad apples.
“How much more evidence does the home secretary need that misogyny is baked into our police forces will never change.
“That means fewer women will come forward to report violence against them, and more perpetrators will get away with it – including police officers themselves.
“Sarah Everard was murdered by a serving police officer, and the gravity of that crime and everything that has emerged since demands an intervention on the same scale as the Macpherson Report.”
This was an investigation conducted in 1997 triggered by the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence.
Its conclusion heavily criticised the Met over its “professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership” when it came to the high-profile case.
Reid added: “It requires police leaders and politicians to stop burying their heads in the sand and take responsibility.”
The organiser of the campaign, Cath, also explainer how her anger over the police officers who had shared selfies of the murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry – and how the IOPC report made her realise that “hatred of women is endemic in our police forces”.