EVEN the Metropolitan Police’s HR systems are racist, with anti-black discrimination “baked” into the institutional design of Britain’s largest police force, a damning review has found.

Complaints of racism are dismissed as “banter” or person

ality clashes as the force’s performance systems protect perpetrators by rewarding familiarity over fairness, the internal probe found.

Those speaking up are meanwhile accused of “playing the race card” or being “too sensitive,” with black staff given coded feedback such as “be a bit friendlier” and penalised for naming racism, it said.

Shereen Daniels, whose 30 Patterns Of Harm: A Structural Review Of Systemic Racism Within The London Metropolitan Police Service is published today, said: “Systemic racism is not a matter of perception. For almost 50 years, reviews of the Metropolitan Police have documented the harm experienced by black Londoners, officers and staff.

“True accountability begins with specificity. When institutions speak in broad terms of ‘ethnic minorities’ or ‘diversity,’ those most harmed disappear from view.

“This work begins where harm is sharpest, because that is where structural change must start. Anti-blackness is the clearest indicator of organisational dysfunction.

“The same systems that sustain racial harm against black people also enable other forms of harm. Confronting this is not an act of exclusion but a necessary foundation for safety, fairness and justice for everyone.

“For the Met, the challenge ahead is to build the leadership discipline to face what the report has revealed and act on its findings in a way that protects the public rather than the institution.”

Her review, which was commissioned by the Met from the consultancy HR Rewired, ran from May to July.

It comes two years after Louise Casey’s 2023 review, commissioned after the murder of Sarah Everard, found the Met “institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic” but treated racism as part of a wider cultural collapse.

Dr Daniels goes further to describe anti-black racism as “baked into institutional design,” diagnosing the Met’s human resources systems as part of the problem.

The Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, who has repeatedly denied that the Met is institutionally racist, pledged renewed efforts to tackle discrimination after a BBC Panorama investigation last month exposed serving Met officers making racist and misogynistic remarks.

Sir Mark described the latest report as “powerful” and insisted that initiatives “like New Met for London and the London Race Action Plan are helping us make progress.

“The level of trust in the Met that black Londoners report is improving – by 10 per cent in two years – but still lags behind others.

“We remain committed to listening, learning, and acting on their concerns.”

But Black Activists Rising Against Cuts UK national chairwoman Zita Holbourne dismissed his words as not enough without serious action to tackle the issues.

“Unless meaningful, intentional, radical action is taken to challenge and eradicate the system of anti-black racism which is enabled and accepted within the Met Police, we can have no faith in the Met as a fair, safe or equal employer of black officers or as black communities when we are victims of crime,” she told the Morning Star.

Stand up to Racism co-convener Sabby Dhalu said: “Yet another report highlights chronic institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police.

“Even the Blair government introduced the Macpherson Inquiry, which was hugely transformative for race relations in Britain.

“We need similar action from the Starmer government.”

And a Network for Police Monitoring spokesman said: “Nothing in this review tells us anything new that Londoners, especially black Londoners, have not already known for decades.

“The reality is the force is serially incapable of acting in anything other than token way on findings of numerous reviews, preferring instead to respond with platitudes and then waiting out any short-term negative publicity.

“The problem isn’t, experience suggests, an HR issue.

“We need to start talking about genuine alternatives focusing on reducing crime and improving safety, rather than settling for violent, discriminatory and oppressive policing.”

Stopwatch executive director Habib Kadiri said: “This report is the culmination of 40 years of failure by the Met to face up to institutional racism within its ranks.

“Sir Mark Rowley can claim he’s making progress, but self-commissioned surveys convince no one who has to live with the day-to-day reality of racist policing.

“Given the Met’s failure to fix the Charing Cross station scandal when it first surfaced in 2022, we have no reason to believe that the lives of Black Londoners will change for the better any time soon.”

Stephen Walcott, head of policy at the Runnymede Trust said: “We are unsurprised by the latest review which concludes what we have known for decades: the Metropolitan Police is institutionally racist.

“As the review states, this is not simply a matter of ‘bad apples.’ Racism is baked into the Met’s systems, culture, and decision-making processes, producing persistent harm for Black Londoners and staff.

“Only weeks ago, BBC Panorama exposed violent racism within the Met Police. For decades, reports and inquiries - from MacPherson to Casey - have identified institutional racism, only to be met with inadequate proposals that fail to address the scale, scope, and entrenched nature of racism within the force. No training initiatives, no amount of diversity, and no accountability mechanisms will ever be sufficient. An institution so fundamentally flawed cannot be reformed.

“We need to take the safety of our communities seriously and treat people’s needs with care and dignity. These latest findings demand a different conversation, one that asks how we can keep our communities safe and how we can prevent harm. Because the Metropolitan Police does not.”