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LONDON. — London’s police force has lost the confidence of the people it serves because it is riven with institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia and doesn’t do enough to weed out bad officers, according to a withering report commissioned after a young woman was raped and killed by a serving officer.
The Metropolitan Police Service, which has more than 34,000 officers and is Britain’s biggest police force, must “change itself” or face being broken up after failing to address these longstanding problems for more than two decades, investigators said in the report published Tuesday.
“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,” said Louise Casey, an expert on victims’ rights and social welfare who led the inquiry. “Far too many Londoners have now lost faith in policing to do that.”
Deep-seated bias, poor management and budget cuts mean that crimes against women and girls are poorly investigated, ethnic minority communities are over-policed and trust in the police is plummeting among LGBTQ people, the report found. These issues have been allowed to fester because whistle-blowers are ostracized, outside criticism is ignored and too many bad officers have been allowed to remain on the job, even after they’ve been charged with domestic abuse or harassing their colleagues. – AP
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