Metropolitan Police — An Ongoing Audit
Metropolitan Police Service (London) · compiled 15 July 2026 · every item links to a primary source
This is an evidence audit. Every finding carries a VERIFIED (regulator/primary source), DOCUMENTED (official stats or reputable press), or UNVERIFIED (advocacy only) label. Nothing here is alleged without a source link.
After a series of failures the Met was placed in special measures / an enhanced level of monitoring by HMICFRS in 2022 — one of only a handful of forces ever subjected to the regime. It remained under enhanced monitoring for more than two and a half years before being moved out in 2025.
A 2024 HMICFRS inspection found the Met 'failing in almost all work areas': inconsistent management of sex offenders (backlog of visits/risk assessments), weak handling of online child-abuse offenders, and inadequate crime investigation and offender management.
HMICFRS found that when children were reported missing the MPS often failed to assess the risk or harm they faced, and did not consistently pursue child-exploitation concerns. Documented in a joint briefing with the Youth Justice Legal Centre.
After an eight-year review, the Panel concluded the Met was 'institutionally corrupt' in the way it concealed or denied failings over the unsolved 1987 murder of Daniel Morgan, prioritising its reputation over the investigation. A later HMICFRS counter-corruption inspection examined whether lessons were learned.
An IOPC investigation into Charing Cross police station found a culture of discriminatory, misogynistic and racist behaviour, with officers making offensive comments and using excessive force. Multiple officers faced gross-misconduct proceedings.
Two Met officers were jailed (2 years 9 months each, 2021) for taking and sharing photographs of the bodies of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, and for mocking their relatives. The Independent Office for Police Conduct called it a violation of the women's dignity.
An HMICFRS inspection of the police response to violence against women and girls found the Met (among others) failing to protect victims adequately — with issues including poor risk assessment and weak investigation of offences that disproportionately harm women and girls.
The IOPC launched an independent investigation after a 45-year-old man died in the Romford custody suite in April 2025; he was found unresponsive during a routine cell check and pronounced dead despite CPR, with CCTV and body-worn footage being reviewed.
After an eight-year review, the Panel concluded the Met was 'institutionally corrupt' in the way it concealed or denied failings over the unsolved 1987 murder of Daniel Morgan, prioritising its reputation over the investigation. A later HMICFRS counter-corruption inspection examined whether lessons were learned.
An IOPC investigation into Charing Cross police station found a culture of discriminatory, misogynistic and racist behaviour, with officers making offensive comments and using excessive force. Multiple officers faced gross-misconduct proceedings.
Two Met officers were jailed (2 years 9 months each, 2021) for taking and sharing photographs of the bodies of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, and for mocking their relatives. The Independent Office for Police Conduct called it a violation of the women's dignity.
A 15-year-old Black girl (Child Q) was strip-searched by Met officers at her east London school in 2020 without an appropriate adult or warrant, after a racist suspicion she smelled of cannabis. The safeguarding review found it was unjustified, and linked it to racism. The Met accepted failings.
In March 2026 the Met was accused of insulting Black people and 'mocking the pain' after proposing to absorb its anti-racism strategy into a broader plan. The policing minister said the document 'gives the wrong impression' and forces pledged to review it.
The Met's use of stop and search has been repeatedly flagged as racially disproportionate: Black Londoners are stopped at several times the rate of white Londoners, a disparity the force has committed to addressing but which remains a live concern in community-trust reviews.
The public inquiry into the failed investigation of Stephen Lawrence's racist murder found the Met 'institutionally racist' — a landmark conclusion that the force's culture produced discriminatory practice it had no effective strategy to address. It remains the reference point for every later racism finding.
Undercover Met officers infiltrated political and environmental campaigns for decades, formed deceptive intimate relationships, and spied on the family of Stephen Lawrence. The ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry has documented systemic deceit; in 2025 a new archive further exposed the scale of the operations.
Met data revealed 650 children were strip-searched over a two-year period, the majority found innocent of the suspicions against them. The Children's Commissioner condemned the force's child-protection record; this followed the Child Q case and showed it was not isolated.
Two Met officers were sacked in 2023 for the racist stop-and-search of athlete Bianca Williams and her partner (found to have lied about smelling cannabis). In 2024 they were reinstated on appeal — a decision widely criticised as undermining accountability.
At a gross misconduct hearing, the officer who carried out Child Q's 2020 school strip-search accepted she failed in her duties and that the search 'should never have happened', although she and two colleagues deny gross misconduct.
In 2021, serving Met PC Wayne Couzens used his warrant to kidnap, rape and murder Sarah Everard. The Angiolini Inquiry exposed systemic failures in vetting and in how the force handled earlier reports of Couzens's misconduct. The case triggered a national collapse in women's trust in police.
Sisters Bibaa Henry (46) and Nicole Smallman (27) were murdered in Fryent Country Park in June 2020. Their family criticised the Met's initial response after they were reported missing. The subsequent officer-photo scandal deepened public anger at the force.
Sean Rigg died of a cardiac arrest after prone restraint at Brixton police station in 2008. The inquest condemned a 'catalogue of failings'; an IPCC investigation found the force 'more than minimally' contributed to his death. The IOPC later issued an unprecedented apology for investigation delays.
The Met shot dead Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell in 2005 after a flawed counter-terror operation. The force was convicted of health-and-safety failings (19 alleged failures), fined and ordered to pay ~£560k costs; an inquest found the shooting 'unlawful'.
Chris Kaba was shot dead by a Met firearms officer in Streatham in 2022. The officer was acquitted of murder; the IOPC then paused gross-misconduct proceedings, a decision his family called 'devastating' and which raised fresh questions about accountability for fatal force.
Leon Briggs, a 39-year-old Black man, died in 2013 after being restrained in Bedfordshire Police custody; the Met's role/associated misconduct proceedings drew scrutiny, and a misconduct hearing against officers collapsed. His death is cited in ongoing concerns about deaths of Black men in custody.
The Independent Review of Deaths and Serious Incidents in Police Custody (Angiolini) exposed systemic failings in how police investigate and learn from deaths in custody — directly relevant to multiple Met cases (Sean Rigg, Jean Charles de Menezes and others) where accountability was found lacking.
The black-cab rapist John Worboys evaded capture for years due to police investigation failures. The Supreme Court ruled the Met breached victims' human rights by failing in its duty to investigate serious violence against women, establishing that police can be held liable.
An HMICFRS inspection of the police response to violence against women and girls found the Met (among others) failing to protect victims adequately — with issues including poor risk assessment and weak investigation of offences that disproportionately harm women and girls.
Nationally, 5,625 police misconduct cases were awaiting conclusion as at 31 March 2025. The Met has historically carried a large share of gross-misconduct matters, and repeated IOPC findings have highlighted failures to challenge discriminatory behaviour among officers.
After the Grenfell Tower Inquiry found all 72 deaths were avoidable, bereaved families and survivors criticised the pace of the Met's criminal investigation as too slow. The investigation is the largest the Met has ever undertaken; up to 20 firms and 57 individuals were said potentially facing charges.
The Met was found to have under-recorded rape and serious sexual offences by 22-25%, and a whistleblower alleged hundreds of rapes were not recorded as crimes. Later HMICFRS audits found forces (including the Met) inaccurately recorded thousands of rape reports — only a handful of sampled cases were accurately recorded.
Allegations the Met understated sexual and other offences by misclassifying crimes led the UK Statistics Authority to strip police crime figures of their official status in 2014. HMICFRS's 2018 Crime Data Integrity inspection found continued accuracy problems in how the Met recorded crimes.
Nationally, 5,625 police misconduct cases were awaiting conclusion as at 31 March 2025. The Met has historically carried a large share of gross-misconduct matters, and repeated IOPC findings have highlighted failures to challenge discriminatory behaviour among officers.
In 2025 HMICFRS moved the Met out of enhanced monitoring, judging it had made sufficient progress on the causes of concern. The force cites rising neighbourhood-policing visibility and improved vetting as evidence of reform — though the inspectorate notes serious work remains.