How George Floyd’s death has changed the Metropolitan Police

Like many across the world, I watched in complete horror when, nearly 12 months ago, the shocking images of George Floyd’s last moments began to stream across the world.

His murder sparked outrage and became a touchpoint for difficult conversations and uncomfortable truths about race and racism across many societies, much of it focused on policing.

As a long serving police officer and someone who has worked with US police chiefs on issues such as de-escalation tactics, I know that British policing is very different to that of America. However, I also know that our society has its own issues, which mean that people have different experiences of opportunity, discrimination and outcomes across many institutions – including the criminal justice system.

In London, the Met’s most important priorities are tackling violence and increasing the levels of trust and community confidence. Although the Met does have high levels of community confidence, not all communities have the same levels of trust in us, and trust is lowest from Black Londoners. This is something we are determined to change; we know that lower levels of trust can be a barrier to keeping people safe.

Trust is earned and the challenges made to us following George Floyd’s death have resonated with us, just as they did following the publication of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry all those years ago when the term “institutionally racist” was applied to the Met.

Stephen’s racist murder, and the report that followed, was a seminal moment that led the Met and wider society to hold a mirror up to itself and conclude that change was needed. And so more than 20 years ago, the Met started on a journey to improve community relations and gain the trust of communities – particularly Black communities.

Undoubtedly, at the time of George Floyd’s death, the Met had made really significant progress and in so many positive ways it was a totally different organisation. But I knew – we all knew – there was still much more work to be done.

Over the past 12 months, we have been looking at ourselves critically and asking hard questions about whether our progress was happening quickly enough and across a broad enough front. It wasn’t. We re-energised our efforts. We encouraged conversations about the lived experiences of our Black police officers and staff and our communities so we could identify what more we could do.

In the past year, I have personally led a dedicated team of officers, many from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, who are helping us transform our approach to many things – from stop and search, use of force, to how we train our officers. We are putting the experiences of our communities and our own ethnic minority officers and staff at the heart of what we do and listening. I’m really grateful for their support to help us understand and respond.

We are finding ways to help the public get a better understanding of our work by seeing the reality of police work up close and helping us improve what we do.

Through our ongoing recruitment efforts, Black, Asian and minority ethnic Londoners are ensuring the Met is becoming more representative of our city by joining as officers, helping us change from the inside out. We want to accelerate this even more.

All new recruits will have better training so they understand the cultural and social history of the places and people they will protect. We’ve also set up a taskforce to improve the retention of our existing staff from diverse communities.

We aren’t doing these things because it’s politically correct to do them. We’re doing them because all our communities deserve a police service they feel belongs to them, serves them and reflects them – one that they have full confidence in.

I’m proud of how the Met has responded over the past year, as well as all the progress made before that. I’m proud of the compassion officers and staff have shown each other and to communities across London, especially during times when it felt that there was much to divide us. I’m proud of how we are listening to our communities and understanding their history and the challenges they have faced. I am grateful for how Londoners have not flinched in coming forward to help our drive to continually improve. Thank you for your help. George Floyd’s killing was shocking and we owe it to his legacy to keep keeping on.

I’m conscious that a single incident where we don’t get it right can unravel so much of the good work happening day in, day out. We are constantly challenging ourselves, we have more to do, but I know I can count on the men and women of the Met and the communities of London to get us there.

By doing so we will be even better at keeping London and Londoners safe.

Sir Stephen House is deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police