Inclusion London’s response to the Casey Review

The Baroness Casey review of policing culture in the Metropolitan Police Service (the Met), made public on 21 March 2023, laid bare what many Disabled Londoners already know: that front-line policing is in dire need of improvement.

Posted: 14 August 2023

The Baroness Casey review[1] of policing culture in the Metropolitan Police Service (the Met), made public on 21 March 2023, laid bare what many Disabled Londoners already know: that front-line policing is in dire need of improvement.

We welcome this vital review and will continue to support work by the London Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime and the Met to improve and root out corrupt and abusive police officers, to improve internal processes for Disabled staff, as well as lobbying for change to improve Disabled victim’s experience of the criminal justice system overall.

In the Casey review, there are many examples of discrimination and systems that disadvantage Disabled police officers, as well as derogatory attitudes and behaviour towards Disabled people, which is known as Disablism[2]. However, this was referred to as discrimination not Disablism, in the review.

Through our anti-hate crime work, and links to the Met Disability Independent Advisory Group, it is clear to us that Disablist attitudes and practices do exist in the Met. The Baroness Casey review provided many examples of prejudice and bias against Disabled police officers. It also included shocking attitudes about Disabled people held by some police officers.

We are deeply disappointed that the review fails to explicitly call out Disablism as one of the key areas of prejudice and bias in the Met. This failure means there are currently no workstreams or leadership directives that focus on tackling Disablism in the Met or the London Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime.

In the Baroness Casey review, there are four ‘test’ statements made that are used to identify and describe systemic discrimination and prejudice, from the evidence collected by the review. It is clear to us that these test statements also apply to the treatment and experience of Disabled people in the Met, using excerpts from the review and other evidence, as shown below:

Clearly, not everyone in the Met is disablist, but there are disablists and people with disablist attitudes within the organisation.

The experiences shared by Disabled police officers regarding the discrimination they faced paint a troubling picture of the Met culture. One quote highlights: “…There is an attitude in the Met about people with disabilities, especially hidden ones, being lazy, and it destroys you…”

The quote from an officer who did not want to work with those “m****” is abhorrent and deeply concerning. The Charing Cross Station IOPC investigation[3] included evidence that police officers used derogatory language when referring to Disabled people. This detail was excluded from mainstream media when reporting on the case.[4] Discriminatory language, in any form, must not be tolerated and should be addressed decisively.

In our experience, Disablist language has become ingrained in everyday conversation, often going unrecognised for what it is: belittling, demeaning and ‘othering’. This issue goes beyond the Met and mirrors a wider societal issue, much the same as is the case with racism, misogyny, and homophobia. The consequences for Disabled people can be severe, as demonstrated in our recent report on the media’s reporting on crimes involving Disabled people.[5]

Disabled officers and staff experience disablism at work and it is routinely ignored, dismissed, or not spoken about. Many do not think it is worth reporting

The Casey review highlights disability discrimination as the top reason for employment tribunals and management grievances. One Disabled officer shared, “We do have a culture of bullying…People have questioned if you are really that ill, why don’t you leave the job.”

Of employment tribunal claims brought against the Met between 2017-18 and 2021-22, 358 were related to disability discrimination, compared with 219 related to race and 131 related to sex discrimination.

The Casey review says, ‘the number of employment tribunal claims brought by disabled people was “striking” and that the force “has not shown sufficient curiosity as to why this apparent pattern has emerged, and what if anything they could learn from it”, which was “a source of frustration” to Disabled people working in the Met.’[6]

Disablism and disability bias are reinforced within Met systems

Despite the Met having top level recruitment drives for Disabled police officers[7], Disabled police officers are not provided with adequate support or reasonable adjustments to fulfil their role, instead being made to feel inferior and managed out of teams.

Through some of our work with the Met, it was clear that issues relating to disability were often overlooked or given minimal attention that resulted in key systems not being accessible to Disabled police officers, putting them at a disadvantage compared to their non-Disabled peers.

The Met under-protects and over-polices Disabled Londoners

We use the term Disabled people to mean, “… all groups of people with impairments including people with learning difficulties, people who experience mental distress, Deaf people, people with visual impairments, people with hearing impairments, people who are neuro-divergent, people with long term health conditions, people with invisible impairments and people with physical impairments.”

Under protecting

We found Disabled victims being dismissed, not believed and sometimes mocked when trying to report crimes to the Met. These were not isolated incidents and suggested that Disabled victims were being treated differently due to being Disabled, by police officers.[8] In the Casey review, there was a quote that stated, “People with learning disabilities often do not even get to court as they are seen as unreliable witnesses.”

Seeing Disabled people as being unreliable witnesses is a symptom of Disablism. Greenwich University have produced a detailed report on this as part of their Disabled Witness Project. [9]

As part of our Hate Crime Project, we work with an organisation that has been supporting people with learning difficulties to identify what they are experiencing is a crime, and they offer support to report those crimes to the police. They provided numerous examples that show how difficult it is for them to be taken seriously by authorities, even when reporting violence and situations that put them in physical danger. These examples are included in our Poor Police Response Report.[10]

The current provision for police officers for training relating to disability issues is inadequate. It creates an environment that does not serve Disabled victims.

Women experiencing mental trauma and distress who have been victims of crime are vulnerable to abuse by police officers, as highlighted in the Casey review. There is not a consistent approach to understanding mental trauma and distress in the context of being a Disabled person, using the Social Model of Disability Model.[11]

Over policing

There is disproportionate representation of Disabled people in the criminal justice system.[12] There is to research focusing on neurodivergent children[13], ADHD adults[14], people with learning difficulties[15], autistic people[16], and mental trauma and distress[17], for example.

A recent Inquest report looked at the deaths of racialised people in prison[18]. In the report, it details that most of the cases involved people who were also Disabled, mainly through mental trauma and distress, and some learning difficulties. The statistics about Disabled people in the Criminal Justice System are often overlooked, or not understood in the context of Disablism, so it is important to recognise the significance of how people with multiple protected characteristics and intersecting identities are disproportionately impacted by systemic discrimination and prejudice.

We want to see agencies and organisations using intersectional frameworks to help understand these intersecting issues, so solutions can be implemented.

In the Casey review, it rightly says, “Tackling discrimination is a legal and operational imperative for the Met. It needs to acknowledge the extent to which racism, misogyny and homophobia are present within its organisational processes and systems in order to move forward.” We believe that all prejudice, bias and discrimination, including Disablism should be called out and given the attention needed for true systemic change.

Our key asks are:

Public acknowledgement from MOPAC and the Met that Disablism exists in our police force.
Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Officers in the Met and MOPAC, with specific training in Disability equality issues, based on the social models of disability.
Set up workstreams focusing on Disability and dismantling Disablism in the Met.
Coproduce action plans with specific and measurable improvements. With Disabled people and our organisations,

Our call to action for DDPOs:

We are looking for DDPOs who want to campaign for change in the Criminal Justice System, focusing on combating Disablist practices and discrimination and improving services for Disabled victims of crime in London. Our main areas of work will be to campaign for implementation of recommendations made in our Poor Police Response Report, and our response to the MOPAC Police and Crime Plan, which are:

From our Poor Police Response Report –

For Police

Reinstate Metropolitan Police Disability Hate Crime Matters Initiative.
Make more use of the Metropolitan Police Disability Independent Advisory Group.
All Borough Command Units (BCUs) to set up or make use of CPS Multi-agency Scrutiny Panels for hate crime case reviews via Hate Crime Coordinators (HCOPS).
Support / set up a Community Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (Community MARAC) in each BCU to deal with high risk and repeat Anti Social Behaviour (ASB) and hate crimes cases and other cases involving adults at risk.
To make better use of local DDPOs via the Community Alliance To Combat Hate (CATCH) Partnership when responding to Disabled victims.
To counter Disablism
- Specialist Equality Training led by people with lived experience and proactive recruitment of Disabled Police Officers.
- For recruitment processes to include personality assessments to ensure recruits have the right attitude and values to serve the public and marginalised groups.
Identify links between Anti-Social Behaviour / Neighbourhood disputes and hate incidents earlier.
HCOPS to make use of Metropolitan Police Service new technology & software to identify hotspots, repeat incidents and link to safeguarding adult referrals and anti-social behaviour reports.

For the Crown Prosecution Service

Prosecution of police officers dismissed for gross misconduct when involving Disabled people.
Make a public statement and put procedures in place to actively seek prosecution of police officers who have been involved in inappropriate behaviour, exploitation and abuse against Disabled people.
The CPS and MPS need to do more work together to understand the negative impact on the community if police officers who have assaulted, exploited or abused a Disabled person do not face criminal proceedings and to look at how those decisions are made and communicated to the Disabled community.

For the Mayor’s Office for Police & Crime (MOPAC)

MOPAC commissioners to ringfence part of small grants scheme and fund more localised organisations led by Disabled people to support Disabled victims and raise awareness of hate crime within Disabled community in collaboration with the CATCH Partnership.
Work with MPS Deputy Commissioner’s Delivery Group.

For the London Assembly Police & Crime sub-committee

Prioritise hate crime against Disabled people to monitor progress and effectiveness of initiatives by MPS to improve reporting of Disability Hate Crime and Disabled victims level of satisfaction with how their cases are dealt with.

Recommendations from our response to the MOPAC Police and Crime Plan –

Do more to understand our community, with reference to our Abandoned, Forgotten, Ignored Report, using Social Model language when engaging with DDPOs and having a Disability Lead Officer.
Combatting Disablism through intersectional research using Public Health Approach on why Disabled people are targeted, by MOPAC’s Behavioural Insights Team
Rollout of Disability Equality Training based on Social Model of Disability for all levels of staff
Resource capacity building for the London DDPO network of organisations providing holistic support.
Do more to engage with our community, making more use of existing community meetings, like the Hate Crime Stakeholder Group, to find out about victims not reporting to authorities.
an expansion of the Mayor’s action plan for transparency, accountability, and trust in policing to include intersectional identities and other disproportionately affected groups.
to increase visible neighbourhood policing, using data to identify hotspots for disabled people and harassment, cuckooing and would encourage Community Safety Partnerships to include Disabled community representatives.
Do more to support victims of repeat hate crime, using new technology to see patterns of so called low level incidents, to prevent escalation into serious offences.
Develop a Victims Hub with fully accessible support and services.
As many Disabled people, particularly those with learning difficulties are targeted online for fraud, we would welcome input into how support would be offered to those marginalised groups of online fraud.

… and respond to key consultations and reviews, including the Met Turnaround Plan, now called A new Met for London, and the current MOPAC Victim Services Review.

We have set up quarterly policy and campaign meetings for DDPOs to look in detail about these issues to agree coordinated key messages and responses, to make sure Disabled victims of crime are given equal access to justice and support.

To read the Baroness Casey Review in full, please follow this link https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/met/about-us/baroness-casey-review/update-march-2023/baroness-casey-review-march-2023a.pdf

To find out more about Inclusion London’s work on police and crime issues, and sign up to attend meetings, please contact louise.holden@inclusionlondon.org.uk

[1] https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/met/about-us/baroness-casey-review/update-march-2023/baroness-casey-review-march-2023a.pdf

[2] https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/disability-and-disablism#:~:text=A%20disabled%20activist,institutional%20discrimination%22%20against%20disabled%20people.

[3] https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Operation%20Hotton%20Learning%20report%20-%20January%202022.pdf

[4] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61032343

[5] https://www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/news/disability-crime-and-hate-crime-in-the-news/

[6] https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/met/about-us/baroness-casey-review/update-march-2023/baroness-casey-review-march-2023.pdf

[7] https://www.joiningthepolice.co.uk/supporting-diversity/support-organisations/disabled-police-association

[8] https://www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/news/poor-police-response-report-disabled-victims-of-hate-crime/

[9] https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/36345/7/36345_HEWITT_Policing_disability_hate_crime.pdf

[10] https://www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/news/poor-police-response-report-disabled-victims-of-hate-crime/

[11] https://www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/about-us/disability-in-london/social-model/the-social-model-of-disability-and-the-cultural-model-of-deafness/

[12] https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/inquiries-and-investigations/does-criminal-justice-system-treat-disabled-people-fairly