Jess McDonald joined the force in 2018 as a trainee detective
The Metropolitan Police was recently described as institutionally misogynistic in a review by Baroness Casey, who found that the “boys’ club” culture was widespread and that the force was failing to protect the public from officers abusing women.
Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told the BBC the force is experiencing its “biggest doubling of standards” in 50 years as it tries to tackle the problem of its internal culture.
To try to get a sense of what policing in London might be like, the BBC has spoken to a former special agent and a detective, who have written books about their experiences.
They have shared their accounts of some of the things they witnessed and have expressed their thoughts about what the future might hold.
Jess McDonald joined the Met in 2018 as a trainee detective in a pilot aimed at people who want a career change by joining the police force.
She said she witnessed chronic resource shortages, “overwhelming” workloads and a “broken” justice system. At one location where she was deployed, she said the facilities were so poor that there was no space for staff to store their food, so people kept their lunches in a fridge-freezer that also contained evidence of rape cases.
Another officer no longer on the force is Matt Lloyd-Rose, who from 2012 to 2015 worked as a teacher in addition to serving at the Met as a special agent. a voluntary role with full police powers including detention.
Matt Lloyd-Rose said that for many officers there was a “lack of a sense of mission and clarity of purpose.”
Lloyd-Rose, from Lambeth in south London, said some things he witnessed during his time with the force “shocked” him, including an occasion when his team had been on patrol in a police van in Clapham.
“We had been dealing with all kinds: arresting people for drugs, helping people who were drunk and confused, and going after illegal hot dog vendors,” he said.
“One of the regular officers then said we’d go ‘talent scouting,'” he added, and the team drove “back and forth down Main Street” while the regular officers “made comments about the women outside the window, had some kind of group discussion about who’s hotter, who they’d be more interested in having sex with.”
Mr Lloyd-Rose said he witnessed unacceptable behavior while on patrol in Clapham – stock photography
On another occasion, he said a young woman approached the team after her bag was stolen on the bus.
“She was really upset; she was sobbing and was visibly very distraught,” Mr Lloyd-Rose explained. “And then the regular who’s been dealing with her rolled up the window again and immediately said ‘she’d get (sexual expletive)’.”
Lloyd-Rose said that while it did not witness “overtly aggressive discrimination”, there was a consistent “enforcement of rules and boundaries, somewhat insidious” often involving female staff.
“There was a real expectation that people who objected would be removed or provoked to try to overcome that objection,” he said.
Mr Lloyd-Rose added that this attitude was not only displayed by frontline officers, but also by those leading the training.
“One of the trainers was telling us about a female officer he had been on patrol with and said, ‘Before you ask, I saw her naked when we were playing strip poker.’
“The culture was openly expressed in front of various groups of officials that that coach didn’t know at all, and he was quite happy and confident that he was able to express that culture without anyone opposing it.
“The institutional misogyny and sexism seemed ridiculously blatant, basically.
“That kind of culture provides cover and space for people with the most damaging viewpoints and others who are genuinely intent on harm, but it also provides a culture where terrible things can be normalized.”
Jess McDonald said there was a feeling of worthlessness among some Met employees
As a detective, Jess McDonald’s experience was different from Mr. Lloyd-Rose’s, though perhaps no less troubling in terms of what it says about the Met Police and the criminal justice system in general.
During her time on the force, she was assigned to the Community Safeguard Unit, which handles, among other crimes, cases of domestic and sexual violence.
She said the department was “internally known as the most difficult area to police” due to the “trauma and intensity of the role”.
“I’d compare it earlier to trying to fight a fire with a chocolate teapot.”
Ms McDonald said she eventually left the Met because of bullying
She said a sense of “hopelessness” was evident, “because you are investigating violations day in and day out and very few of them are being taken further.”
“It’s the demoralization of having to be the face or the person who turns to somebody who’s going to have gone through the whole investigative process… and say, ‘You know I’m really sorry, but they don’t even charge me.'”
Ms McDonald said the feeling of “uselessness” among Met staff doing this work was so pervasive that on several occasions her colleagues said they would not bother to report a sexual offense committed against them.
On one occasion, a training leader even admitted that she felt this way to an entire room of trainees learning how to investigate a rape, McDonald said.
“While we were learning about everything theoretically, she’s like, ‘look, I probably wouldn’t report it if it happened to me.'”
Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the force has “a practical plan to turn things around” in the way it deals with violence against women and girls.
Asked if she saw or heard of any women being mistreated within the force, Ms McDonald recalled a time when a colleague said she knew that a man “about to join the rank of sergeant” on a rape team filmed her as the woman used the shower on police premises.
“Fortunately, there was a third officer (a witness to what happened) and he was a superintendent from the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards,” he said.
Ms McDonald said the offender had met her colleague the night before and “knew exactly when she was going to be in the shower”.
“He films her using the shower through the glass window above the door. She could see the phone in his hand as he passed out and faced him.”
McDonald said the superior officer witnessed the confrontation and arrested his colleague for voyeurism.
The offender was convicted of voyeurism, but McDonald said: “I can’t help but think that if the other guy hadn’t seen that and sprung into action and knew what to do, I don’t think my friend would have gone any further.”
Inside the Met, she believes there should be a focus on “empowering people to speak up internally on the front lines” in cases where vetting doesn’t rule out officers who joined police in abusing their power.
“Internally, people know who the bad guys are…the people who are doing front-line work have an idea of the people; who’s creepy, who’s making a comment,” he said.
“Currently we’re not doing anything proactive… there’s just this culture of silence and nobody really rocks the boat, nothing really gets done. If you speak up, it’s huge.”
A Met Police spokesperson said: “The commissioner has been unequivocal about his commitment to reforming Met standards: he laid out his plans following the release of the Casey Report.
“We recognize that we have let Londoners and our own staff down.”
Matt Lloyd-Rose is the author of Into the Night: A Year with the Police, and Jess McDonald is the author of No Comment: What You Wish You Had Known About Becoming a Detective.