{"id":469320,"date":"2026-03-11T08:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T08:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/469320\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T08:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T08:57:09","slug":"met-accused-of-insulting-black-people-with-shake-up-of-anti-racism-strategy-metropolitan-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/469320\/","title":{"rendered":"Met accused of insulting black people with shake-up of anti-racism strategy | Metropolitan police"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Metropolitan police<\/a> have been accused of insulting black people and mocking the pain it has caused them after revealing it wants to absorb its anti-racism strategy into a broader anti-discrimination scheme.<\/p>\n

The Met said the scheme, also including gender and sexual orientation, would increase its chance of success in better serving groups it had failed in the past.<\/p>\n

But Dr Shereen Daniels, the academic whose report last year on race for the Met found it caused harm to black people<\/a>, said the organisation lacked the will to stamp out prejudice and warned it was going backwards.<\/p>\n

Daniels and others said the new plan risked diluting the force\u2019s commitment to anti-racism, which was already under fire for being too little and too late.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the London policing board, the Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley<\/a>, denied the new plan was about moving away from a focus on race, which has been a decades-long problem for the Met.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cOne of those key areas for action will be in relation to black communities. Another will definitely be in respect of LGBT communities, another in respect of gender.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think all of those issues are important but doing it systemically, recognising intersectionality and the complexity \u2026 of the area of work is going to be critical.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it is not about becoming nonspecific and nontargeted, quite the opposite. It\u2019s about being really deliberate. Where do we do cross-cutting action and where do we do specific actions?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rowley also said DEI, that is diversity, equality and inclusion policies, \u201cwere increasingly challenged nationally and internationally\u201d and subject to \u201cvolatile and polarised public debate\u201d. In the US the president, Donald Trump, has attacked them, as has Reform UK in Britain.<\/p>\n

The commissioner added: \u201cYou can\u2019t do policing by consent if you\u2019re not an inclusive organisation, particularly in a city with the complexity and global connectivity of London<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniels said: \u201cDropping race for inclusion is embarrassing and insulting for those who have been harmed.<\/p>\n

\u201cRebranding to inclusion means the Met gets to avoid confronting its organisational design. This is insulting and makes a mockery of the experiences black Londoners, police officers, staff and volunteers have had to put up with for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniels\u2019 report, called 30 Patterns of Harm, was published in November and was commissioned by the Met. It came shortly after an undercover BBC report filmed at a London police station found officers being racist and misogynist.<\/a><\/p>\n

Daniels\u2019 report found that the \u201cracial harm\u201d the Met inflicted on black people was \u201cinstitutionally defended\u201d and its leadership and culture protect the force from real change. It concluded the force\u2019s design \u201cmade it inevitable\u201d that racial harm kept recurring.<\/p>\n

She said since the report was published she had not met the commissioner and had decided she could no longer work with the Met, which asked for her continued help.<\/p>\n

Daniels said: \u201cPeople tell me he cares. I beg to differ. This is not a commissioner taking racial discrimination and racial harm seriously.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey seems to be kicking the ball into the long grass. These are delaying tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rowley denied the Met was institutionally prejudiced after a 2023 report by Louise Casey found it biased against ethnic minorities, and women, <\/a>as well as institutionally homophobic.<\/p>\n

Daniels said: \u201cWe\u2019ve gone back five years; they might as well not have bothered.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the Met was engaged in \u201creshaping the truth\u201d, and claims from police chiefs that more research was needed, such as into why black people were more likely to be stopped and searched, <\/a>was a delaying tactic. She said: \u201cThey already know, They\u2019ve been told by my report, [by] Casey, all the way back to Macpherson [the 1999 report on the murder of Stephen Lawrence that said the Met was institutionally racist] and Scarman [into the Brixton riots] in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have 50 years\u2019 worth of reports.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Met document for the London policing board said the plan could bring benefits. But it added that moving its race action plan \u201cinto a wider strategy may run the risk of losing the focus on anti-Black racism, which has been the most intransigent issue for the MPS [Metropolitan Police<\/a> Service] for decades, and it is important to understand how the MPS will mitigate this risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Met said it would now consult on the change and said since Rowley\u2019s commissionership had begun there had been gains in trust from black communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Metropolitan police have been accused of insulting black people and mocking the pain it has caused them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-469320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}