I worked for the Met – misogyny and perversion are standard there ...Middle East

An investigation has found evidence of extensive racism and sexism within the Metropolitan Police. The BBC’s Panorama found that serving officers called for immigrants to be shot, “revelled” in the use of force, and were dismissive of alleged rape victims.

The footage challenges the Met’s promise to tackle “toxic behaviours” following the murder of Sarah Everard by one of its officers in 2021.

Sir Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said the behaviour shown was “completely unacceptable” and the officers would face fast-track misconduct hearings within weeks.

Issy Vine, who worked for the Met for five years as a 999 call handler, reported a colleague in 2023 for offensive and discriminatory comments. He was sacked but reinstated on appeal; she has since resigned and campaigns on violence against women and girls. Here, she explains to Eleanor Peake why the new report doesn’t surprise her.

The misogyny and perversion exposed in this week’s Panorama were very much standard culture in the department when I worked at the Met. The BBC is right to highlight it, but no one should be surprised. To me, it just reflects that the Met Police still hasn’t been pushed to undergo an external intervention into its sexism. My own experience as a whistleblower confirms that, too.

I felt it was my duty to report the officer who sat next to me for his vile behaviour. In one shift, he called a rape victim a “slut”, and mocked the murdered Sarah Everard. He was openly racist. He said he wished all foreign people would “go home.” Later that day, he followed me home in his car.

It was so extreme that I thought he might have been some sort of internal investigator to see if people followed the correct protocol. I couldn’t believe his behaviour was real. But it was. I signed up for that job to help people, not to look away.

Reporting it was chaotic and messy but six months later, the officer was dismissed from Scotland Yard. Four months after that, he was rehired, even though the misconduct had been proven. The justly decided dismissal was “too harsh.”

Countless reports and investigations have highlighted the terrible behaviour of our police officers, but they miss the bigger issue: the disciplinary process is failing. The misconduct system is failing to get rid of them. Until someone recognises that the police can’t police themselves, nothing will change. If you let the police investigate their own, they’ll just cover for each other.

Following a 2023 report into the force by Baroness Louise Casey, which found the misconduct process was not fit for purpose, changes were made to make it easier to sack officers. The Met says it removed more than 1,400 officers from 2022 to June 2025 as part of its biggest ever clear-out.

But experts say misconduct panels are still inconsistent, overly cautious, and too easily influenced. They focus on individual officers, with no desire for wider reform or oversight. It all just reinforces the culture where red flags are ignored until something catastrophic happens.

When I moved into dispatching and worked more closely with other officers, I saw more misogyny, more sexism, and stories that suggested excessive force. The way they described arrests made it clear: their language painted pictures of people being “shoved” into vans, “thrown” on the floor, and treated harshly. The older officers, the ones who’d been around for decades, often had an especially harsh attitude. You’d hear things like: “Don’t check on them in the cell, don’t feed them for a while, just teach them a lesson.”

Policing is supposed to mean advocating for others when they can’t, and standing up for what’s right. But the reality is, a lot of officers don’t see it that way. Many see themselves as separate from the public.

The Met Police gets a lot of attention for bad behaviour like this, but they reflect the UK’s wider policing culture. The difference is that the Met is under a magnifying glass, simply because it’s the largest police force in the UK and has had some of the worst examples we know of because of its size and the scale of its responsibility. It covers a hugely diverse, multicultural population in London, where so much more happens day to day compared to other parts of the country. That combination makes its failings more prominent and more damaging. But I know horrific things happen in other forces as well. It’s not as if these problems are exclusive to the Met; it’s just that theirs are more visible.

I wasn’t on the front line, but even in the control room, the culture was clear. Not every officer behaved badly, of course, but enough did to make it impossible to ignore. Unless the system changes, we will just keep going in circles.

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