Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley [MPS]

• THIS week we joined local people in sadness and dismay at the findings of the Casey Review into the internal culture of the Metropolitan Police Service.

Last July we wrote to the new commissioner of the Met, Sir Mark Rowley, and our letter included calls for an action plan to tackle the deep-rooted problems the organisation faces and to work towards ensuring the Met can no longer be accused of being institutionally racist.

Those calls ring true today even more than they did then. Louise, Baroness Casey’s findings are damning and conclusive.

We are clear that we will always work with our local police to keep our borough safe and to hold them to account.

An organisation that can be called “institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic” is simply not acceptable for policing a borough as wonderfully diverse as Islington. That is why we need change.

Now we need to see the Met commit to root and branch reform, to rebuild trust and confidence again among our communities and to ensure the scandals and challenges it has faced are never seen again. That all starts by accepting the recommendations of the report in full.

We all want to make Islington and London the safest it can be, and we must seize this opportunity to ensure that is exactly what the Metropolitan Police Service is focused on doing.

CLLR KAYA COMER-SCHWARTZ
Leader
CLLR JOHN WOOLF
Executive Member for Community Safety