2 hours ago
6
The Metropolitan police have launched a criminal investigation into one of their own police stations after racist graffiti was found daubed on a wall to which officers and staff have access.
Graffiti containing the N-word is alleged to have been found written on a toilet wall at Charing Cross police station in central London. It was spotted and reported by an officer on 29 August, just after Notting Hill carnival.
The area is not open to the public and is used by police officers and staff in a part of the building used as office space.
Charing Cross police station has been hit by repeated allegations of toxic behaviour. Last week nine officers were suspended amid claims of excessive use of force, racism and misogyny. The Independent Office for Police Conduct, the police watchdog, is investigating those claims.
In a statement relating to the latest incident, a Metropolitan police spokesperson said: “On Friday 29 August an officer reported seeing racist graffiti inside Charing Cross police station. Specifically, the graffiti was in a toilet area accessible to officers, staff and other people with access to that part of the building.
“An investigation was immediately opened into a hate crime and is being carried out in liaison with the directorate of professional standards.”
A source said the assumption within the Met was that it was more than likely someone employed by the force was responsible.
The IOPC said it had until now been unaware of the report of racist graffiti. The graffiti did not form part of the allegations sent to the police watchdog by the Met last week.
An IOPC spokesperson said: “This matter is not part of the allegations that were referred to us last week by the Met police, regarding the behaviour of officers based at Charing Cross station, that we are now independently investigating. We will be liaising with the Met to seek further information on this matter.”
Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Met for the last three years, has vowed to clean up Britain’s biggest force and reform its culture. The Met says more than 1,400 officers have been ousted since 2022, and the commissioner has vowed to bolster the integrity and reputation of the force that covers almost all of London.
It was a series of scandals, including one at Charing Cross police station, that eventually led to Rowley’s predecessor as commissioner, Cressida Dick, departing in 2022.
The first big scandal to hit the station led to an IOPC report in 2022 revealing graphic details of officers sharing messages about hitting and raping women, the deaths of black babies and the Holocaust. The offending behaviour of 19 individuals took place between 2016 and 2018 and at the time the officers were based mainly at Charing Cross.
A report by Louise Casey in 2023 found that the Met was institutionally racist, a conclusion Rowley rejected despite his own office having commissioned the report.
Andy George, the president of the National Black Police Association, said the graffiti was another example of the Met continuing to have a huge problem with race, which its leaders were inadequately failing to address.
“The discovery of racist graffiti inside Charing Cross station is yet another blatant reminder of the deep-rooted racism that continues to blight the Metropolitan police,” he said. “However, these problems are not confined to one station, and scapegoating individual leadership teams only serves to hide the wider failings across the service.”
George said the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, who oversees the Met, must do more. “The mayor of London and the mayor’s office of policing and crime must hold the commissioner fully accountable and step up their scrutiny.”
In 2019 the Guardian revealed that a swastika was found drawn on an inside wall at Edmonton police station in Enfield, north London, in an area accessible to officers and staff. The culprit was not caught.
Lady Casey’s report raised the threat of the Met being broken up if it failed to fix its big problems and rebuild trust and confidence.
George said: “The National Black Police Association has long warned that the Met is beyond fixing; these events show the time for incremental change has passed. The Metropolitan police must be broken up and a new policing structure built that is truly capable of earning the trust of London’s diverse communities.”
