The Metropolitan Police is institutionally racist, sexist, and homophobic and may have more officers like killer Wayne Couzens and serial rapist David Carrick, a damning report has found.
A review by Baroness Louise Casey, who spent a year investigating the Met Police in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard by Couzens, said Britain’s largest force needs a “complete overhaul” and may need to be broken up.
Among a series of recommendations to “fix” the Met, Baroness Casey said the unit that Carrick – who was unmasked as one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders – and Couzens both served in should be “effectively disbanded”.
Image: Rapist David Carrick and killer Wayne Couzens were serving Met Police officers when they carried out their crimes
Her 363-page report found evidence of widespread bullying, racist attitudes and “deep-seated homophobia” in the force.
Asked if there could be more officers in the Met like Couzens and Carrick, Baroness Casey said: “I cannot sufficiently assure you that that is not the case.”
She pointed out that Carrick was only caught after one of his victims heard a statement made by Ms Everard’s devastated mother and was moved to contact Hertfordshire Police, rather than as a result of any action by the Met.
Image: The review was commissioned in the wake of the murder Sarah Everard
Among the report’s findings:
• A policewoman told how she tried to end her own life over the Met’s handling of her abuse allegations against another officer • Staff were told that rape cases “would be dropped” due to a broken Met Police freezer that contained evidence from alleged victims. In another incident, a lunch box was found in the same fridge as rape samples, which would have contaminated evidence • The Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command – in which Couzens and Carrick served – is “a dark corner of the Met where poor behaviours can easily flourish” • A “deeply troubling, toxic culture” existed in the Met’s specialist firearms command, known as MO19, which included a training desk where “men hold competitions on how often they can make their female students cry” • A female officer who accused a more senior colleague of sexual assault said she was “labelled a trouble-maker” • An openly gay officer told the review: “I am scared of the police,” after he was the target of a “sustained campaign of homophobia from inside the Met” • One officer “groomed” a victim of domestic abuse, while another was heard calling a white woman caught buying drugs from a black man a “n***** lover”.
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1:37
‘We’ve let Londoners down’
‘Culture of denial’
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Baroness Casey warned “predatory and unacceptable behaviour has been allowed to flourish” at the Met Police and there was a “culture of denial” in the force.
She called for the Met to “change itself”, adding: “It is not our job as the public to keep ourselves safe from the police. It is the police’s job to keep us safe as the public.”
“I make a finding of institutional racism, sexism and homophobia in the Met,” Baroness Casey wrote.
Image: Baroness Louise Casey carried out the review
Damning review echoes landmark inquiry
The peer said if “sufficient progress” was not made to reform the force, “dividing up the Met… should be considered”.
The force currently runs the national counter-terrorism command and there have long been calls for that responsibility to move to the National Crime Agency, to allow the Met to focus on policing London.
Her conclusion that the force is institutionally racist echoes that of the Macpherson Inquiry in 1999, which took place after Stephen Lawrence’s murder and the abject failures in how the Met investigated his death.
Since then, the force has remained largely white and male, the review found.
The series of scandals at the Met Police
Baroness Casey’s report listed a series of scandals that had “damaged the Met’s reputation and cast doubt upon its culture and standards”. They included:
• The kidnap, rape, and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Met officer Wayne Couzens in March 2021
• The Met’s handling of a public vigil held following Ms Everard’s murder
• An independent report – published in June 2021 – into the 1987 axe murder of Daniel Morgan, which found institutional corruption in the Met
• An inquest in December 2021 for the victims of serial killer Stephen Port found that fundamental failings by the Met “probably” contributed to three of the four deaths
• The jailing in December 2021 of two Met officers for taking and sharing photos of two murdered women, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman
• A police watchdog report in February last year which identified misogyny, harassment, and bullying – including racist, sexist and homophobic messages– among officers based at Charing Cross police station between 2016 and 2018
• A child safeguarding report in March 2022 which revealed a 15-year-old black schoolgirl was strip-searched by police after she was wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis
• The jailing in February of police officer David Carrick, who admitted 49 charges – including 24 counts of rape – against 12 women.
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Met Police report ‘very difficult reading’
Met chief dismisses ‘institutional’ branding
In response to the report, Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley apologised and said he accepted the “diagnosis” of prejudice in the force.
However, he said he would not use the term “institutional” because he viewed it as politicised and ambiguous.
The senior officer – who replaced Dame Cressida Dick as the head of the Met last year – said the findings sparked “feelings of shame and anger, but it also increases our resolve”.
“The appalling examples in this report of discrimination, the letting down of communities and victims, and the strain faced by the frontline, are unacceptable,” he said.
“We have let people down, and I repeat the apology I gave in my first weeks to Londoners and our own people in the Met. I am sorry.
“I want us to be anti-racist, anti-misogynist and anti-homophobic. In fact, I want us to be anti-discrimination of all kinds.”
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1:01
‘Every Met officer needs to be re-vetted’
Carrick victim: Every Met officer needs to re-vetted
By Andy Hughes, investigative journalist
A victim of serial rapist policeman David Carrick is calling for every Met officer to be re-vetted after a damning review into serious failings of Britain’s biggest force.
The woman, in her 40s, was repeatedly raped and assaulted by Carrick for more than six months while in a relationship with the firearms officer.
Helen – not her real name – explained how Carrick boasted about his job in the Met, but later went on to abuse her physically and mentally over the course of their relationship.
Baroness Casey’s report found that the Met’s vetting process fails to weed out predatory officers, and the system needs a complete overhaul.
Helen told Sky News: “I think every male police officer in the Met needs to be re-vetted.
“When I first met David Carrick he was charming and really nice. He used to say that I would always be safe with him because he was a police officer.
“But the man I got to know became a monster. I can’t believe that someone, so clearly evil, could be vetted, and they think he was okay to be in the police. I later found out there were loads of complaints and allegations against him – so he shouldn’t have even been in the police.
“I have no idea how someone so f****d up can be a police officer, never mind give him a gun.”
Carrick, who starved the victim and her daughter, so they would be weak, placed several home surveillance cameras around his home to track their movements while he was out working for the Metropolitan Police.
Helen was left so traumatised that she fears all uniformed police officers. She said: “When I see a police officer in uniform, I freeze – even now. I remember going into a petrol station and all of a sudden, I hear the sound of a police radio and I thought: ‘Oh my god’, I didn’t know what to do.
“At that time in my mind, I was thinking: ‘What are they going to do to me? How are they going to harm me? They’re not here to protect me’.”
Baroness Casey said she was disappointed that Sir Mark would not accept the term “institutional” in relation to her findings, but said she will wait to see what action the force takes in the coming weeks and months.
Schoolchildren are asking teachers how to strangle a partner during sex safely, a charity says, while official figures show an alarming rise in the crime related to domestic abuse cases.
Warning: This article contains references to strangulation, domestic abuse and distressing images.
It comes as a woman whose former partner almost strangled her to death in a rage has advised anyone in an abusive relationship to seek help.
Bernie Ryan, chief executive of the Institute for Addressing Strangulation, has been running the charity since its inception in 2022 after non-fatal strangulation became a standalone offence.
“It’s the ultimate form of control,” she says.
She says perpetrators and victims are getting younger, while the reason is unclear, but strangulation has seeped into popular culture and social media.
“We hear lots of sex education providers, teachers saying that they’re hearing it in schools.
“We know teachers have been asked, ‘how do I teach somebody to strangle safely?’
“Our message is there is no safe way to strangle – the anatomy is the anatomy. Reduction in oxygen to the brain or blood flow will result in the same medical consequences, regardless of context.”
Image: Bernie Ryan, CEO of the Institute for Addressing Strangulation
A recent review by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin recommended banning “degrading, violent and misogynistic content” online.
Violent pornography showing women being choked during sex she found was “rife on mainstream platforms”.
Ms Ryan says she “wants to make sure that young people don’t have access to activities that demonstrate that this is normal behaviour”.
Strangulation is a violent act that is often committed in abusive relationships.
It is the second most common method used by men to kill women, the first is stabbing.
According to statistics shared by the Crown Prosecution Service, in 2024 there was an almost 50% rise in incidents of non-fatal strangulation and suffocation – compared to the year before.
Image: Kerry Allan pleads for other victims of abuse to seek help
Domestic abuse victim Kerry Allan has a message for anyone who is in an abusive relationship.
Kerry met Michael Cosgrove in September 2022. While she said “at the beginning it was really good”, within months he became physically abusive.
In August last year her friends found his profile on a dating app.
“I confronted him and he denied it. I knew we were going to get into a big argument and I couldn’t face it, so I said I was going to my mum’s for a few days and take myself away from the situation.
“I came back a few days later and stupidly I agreed we could try again and everything escalated from that.”
Image: Injuries to Kerry’s chest. Pic: CPS
In the early hours of 25 August the pair had come in from a night out at a concert and got into an argument.
“He was having a go at me, accusing me of flirting with other people, and I was angry. I told him he had a nerve after what he’d done to me in the week and how he humiliated me.
“I told him that I wanted to leave, that we were done and that I wanted to go to my mum’s and that’s when it got bad.
“He pinned me to the bed and that’s when he first strangled me.”
Image: Kerry’s neck injury. Pic: CPS
Kerry says this was the first time she’d ever been violently assaulted. Cosgrove was eerily silent as he eventually let go and Kerry gasped for air.
“I remember trying to get my breath back, I was crying and hyperventilating… I was sick on the bedroom floor and I was asking him to go.”
Cosgrove strangled her for a second time before letting go again.
“He was saying I wasn’t getting out of this bedroom alive. I was dead tonight, he hoped that I knew that. Just kept saying how I’d ruined his life.”
Image: Injury to Kerry’s eye. Pic: CPS
“I remember feeling a sort of shock thinking at this point, I’m not going to get out of this bedroom, he’s actually going to kill me.”
Kerry began screaming and shouting for help as loud as she could.
Her neighbours heard the commotion and called the police. While they were en route, Kerry was once again being assaulted.
Image: Bleeding in Kerry’s eye
“I ran over to the bedroom window and tried to jump out, he grabbed me as I went to open the window, and we struggled. And then I was back in the same position, he was on top of me on the bed, and his hands were round the throat again. But this time it didn’t stop.
“I remember trying to struggle and trying to kick out and hit him and I just kept thinking that I definitely was going to die, because at this point, it wasn’t stopping.”
The next memory Kerry has is opening her eyes to see police and paramedics in the bedroom.
Image: Michael Cosgrove. Pic: CPS
Cosgrove had heard the sirens, jumped out of the bedroom window and went to hide in Kerry’s car.
Kerry remembers opening her eyes to paramedics caring for her: “I remember thinking, I’m alive. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that I was alive and I wasn’t dead. My last memory is him being on top of me with his hands on my throat.”
Image: Kerry met Michael Cosgrove in September 2022
She gives this advice to anyone who is in an abusive relationship: “Please speak to somebody, whether it’s friends, family, a work colleague, whether it’s somebody online, whether it’s a charity that you’re directed to, any sort of abuse is not okay.
“Whether it starts off emotional, they often start off that way, and they escalate, and they can escalate badly.
“Take what happened to me as a huge warning sign, because I wouldn’t want anyone else to be in the position I’ve been in the last eight months.”
Cosgrove was found guilty of attempting to murder Kerry and intentional strangulation.
He will be sentenced in July.
If you suspect you are being abused and need to speak to someone, there are people who can help you.
Two men have been found guilty of cutting down the famous Sycamore Gap tree that stood for more than 150 years.
Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers were convicted of causing more than £620,000 worth of damage to the tree and more than £1,000 worth of damage to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland.
On 27 September 2023, the pair drove 30 miles through a storm to Northumberland from Cumbria, where they both lived, before felling the tree overnight in a matter of minutes.
Image: The Sycamore Gap tree before it was cut down. Pic: CPS
The pair each denied two counts of criminal damage to the sycamore and to Hadrian’s Wall, which was damaged when the tree fell on it, but were convicted by a jury at Newcastle Crown Court on Friday.
The Sycamore Gap tree sat in a dip in the landscape and held a place in pop culture, featuring in the 1991 Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
It also formed part of people’s personal lives, as the scene of wedding proposals, ashes being scattered and countless photographs.
Image: Adam Carruthers. Pic: Northumbria Police/PA
In the clip, the sound of a chainsaw can be heard, and the silhouette of a person can be seen, before the trunk eventually tumbled.
The footage was shot on Graham’s iPhone 13, with the metadata providing the coordinates of the tree.
Part of tree kept as ‘trophy’
Over the course of the trial, the pair blamed one another, but the prosecution argued they were both responsible for what the court heard was a “mindless act of vandalism”.
As well as the video footage of the felling, an image of a piece of wood and a chainsaw was found on Graham’s phone.
Image: Adam Carruthers (R) and Daniel Graham (L) worked together felling trees. Pic: CPS/PA
Image: An image of a piece of wood and a chainsaw was found on Graham’s phone. Pic: PA
Richard Wright KC, prosecuting, told the court: “This was perhaps a trophy taken from the scene to remind them of their actions, actions that they appear to have been revelling in.”
Voice notes played in court
The jury was also played voice notes the pair had sent one another, commenting on the media coverage the incident was receiving.
In one of them, Graham, 39, said to 32-year-old Carruthers: “Someone there has tagged like ITV News, BBC News, Sky News, like News News News”, before adding: “I think it’s going to go wild.”
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0:34
Sycamore Gap seeds saved
Another piece of evidence was a photo of the defendants felling a different tree, about a month before the Sycamore Gap was cut down.
The prosecution said Graham, who owned a groundworks company and Carruthers, who worked in property management and mechanics, were “friends with knowledge and experience in chainsaws and tree felling”.
From the beginning, much of the trial focused on the significance of the tree, with Judge Mrs Justice Lambert telling the jury to put their “emotion to one side” before proceedings began.
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Voicenotes from Sycamore Gap tree trial
‘Mindless acts of violence’
Northumberland Superintendent Kevin Waring, of Northumbria Police, said: “We often hear references made to mindless acts of vandalism – but that term has never been more relevant than today in describing the actions of those individuals”.
Graham and Carruthers gave no explanation for why they targeted the tree, he said, “and there never could be a justifiable one”.
Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner, Susan Dungworth, called the felling of the tree “unfathomable” and said, although “there was no remorse [from the defendants], there was compelling evidence, and now there will be justice”.
Gale Gilchrist, chief crown prosecutor for CPS North East, said Graham and Carruthers took “under three minutes” to bring down the “iconic landmark” in a “deliberate and mindless act of destruction”.
She said she hoped the community “can take some measure of comfort in seeing those responsible convicted”.
‘Enormity of the loss’
Reflecting on the verdict and the actions of the pair, Tony Gates, chief executive of Northumberland National Parks Authority, said: “It just took a few days to sink in – I think because of the enormity of the loss.
“We knew how important that location was for many people at an emotional level, almost at a spiritual level in terms of people’s connection to this case.”
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The tree’s stump still sits by Hadrian’s Wall, where new shoots have been emerging.
Its largest remaining section will go on display at the National Landscape Discovery Centre in the Northumberland National Park later this year.
The effort to preserve the tree’s legacy also goes beyond the region where it stood.
Forty-nine saplings taken from the tree have been conserved by the National Trust. They will be planted in accessible public spaces across the country as “trees of hope”, which will allow parts of the Sycamore Gap to live on.
The defendants, who didn’t react when the verdicts were delivered, will be sentenced in July.
An art dealer who featured on the television show Bargain Hunt has pleaded guilty following a police investigation into terrorist financing.
Oghenochuko “Ochuko” Ojiri, 53, admitted eight counts of failing to make a disclosure during the course of business within the regulated sector, contrary to section 21A of the Terrorism Act 2000.
Prosecutor Lyndon Harris said Ojiri sold art to Nazem Ahmad, a suspected financier of Hezbollah.
“At the time of the transactions, Mr Ojiri knew Mr Ahmad had been sanctioned in the US,” Mr Harris told the court.
“Mr Ojiri accessed news reports about Mr Ahmad’s designation and engaged in discussions with others about his designation.”
“There is one discussion where Mr Ojiri is party to a conversation where it is apparent a lot of people have known for years about his terrorism links.”
Ojiri “dealt with Mr Ahmed directly, negotiated the sales of artwork and congratulated him on those sales,” according to Mr Harris.
Each count Ojiri faced related to an individual sale of artworks, which were sent to Dubai, UAE and Beirut.
Ojiri, from west London, who has also appeared on the BBC’s Antiques Road Trip, was bailed ahead of his sentencing at the Old Bailey on 6 June.
He was ordered to surrender his passport and not apply for international travel documents.
“He is not a flight risk,” Gavin Irwin, mitigating, told the court.
“The fact that he is here – he has left the UK and has always returned knowing he may be charged with offences – he will be here on the next occasion.”