Jewish Londoners are afraid, Baroness Casey tells Metropolitan Police (2024)

Jewish Londoners are afraid, according to Baroness Casey of Blackstock as she criticised Scotland Yard’s “absolutely horrific” handling of a row sparked at a pro-Palestinian rally.

Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, personally apologised on Monday after a sergeant described Gideon Falter, the chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), as “openly Jewish” during a protest on April 13.

Falter was told his presence was “antagonising” and threatened with arrest if he did not leave. The Met apologised then issued a further apology after its initial statement suggested opponents of pro-Palestinian marches “must know that their presence is provocative”.

Casey, who led an independent review of the Met after a serving firearms officer kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard in south London in March 2021, said her “heart sank” when she watched footage of the incident.

She said: “Yet again, absolutely horrific communication handling by the Metropolitan Police. Can it get any worse if you’re Jewish and live in London? A Jewish man is told he can’t walk down the street and I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ Why on earth did they get that wrong? Why on earth did they go out and have a second bite [at] being defensive?”

She made the remarks during a Q&A with The Times Crime and Justice Commission on Monday. The year-long inquiry into the future of the criminal justice system, chaired by Times journalist Rachel Sylvester, held its first meeting with commissioners. Dame Sharon White, chairwoman of John Lewis, James Timpson, chief executive of the Timpson Group, which employs ex-offenders, Dame Anne Rafferty, a former high-court judge and Lady Justice of Appeal and Martin Griffiths, a trauma surgeon and NHS England’s national clinical lead for violence reduction are among the 18 commissioners.

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During her 45-minute session, Casey compared the Met’s clumsy approach with how the force handled the vigil held in Everard’s memory on Clapham Common — days after the 33-year-old’s body was found in woodland near Ashford, Kent. Officers were seen dragging away dozens of mourners as they sought to clear the bandstand.

She said: “Of course, they can’t just [say], ‘We’re really sorry about the skipper out today. He didn’t get that right. We apologise right now unreservedly.’ Not the kind of, ‘I think if you understood how difficult our lives were and realised how tough it is for us as cops then you’d be really sympathetic to this. And actually just, you know, back off and leave us alone, and no you are all right if you’re Jewish and live in London.’ People who are Jewish in London don’t feel OK and that was an example where they felt the opposite of that. I think it’s very difficult for the Met to get their heads around it.”

On Monday, Rowley met representatives from Jewish groups before holding talks with James Cleverly, the home secretary, and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, who is understood to back the commissioner.

Rowley dismissed calls for his resignation, defended the force’s handling of the long-running pro-Palestinian protests and praised the sergeant for his “professional” conduct.

“I completely understand why the sergeant made this assessment. A couple of turns of phrase were clumsy and offensive … and we’ve apologised for that. The wider actions and intent of the officer were professional and in the best tradition of British police trying to prevent disorder,” he told The Guardian.

Casey said she did not believe Rowley should go, telling the meeting: “If a commissioner resigned every time their organisation in the last few years has spectacularly messed up, we probably would never have anybody in that role. I’m unable to judge what happened in this particular case but I think Rowley and Dame Lynne Owens [the deputy Met commissioner] need a period of time to get on with making the changes.”

Casey, a former civil servant who specialised in social welfare, spoke to the commissioners hours after the Met issued yet another apology to Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, whose son Stephen, 18, was killed in a racist attack in Eltham, southeast London, 31 years ago on Monday. The force broke their promise to answer questions over the investigation after the BBC named Matthew White as the sixth suspect in the case last year.

Khan said the Lawrence family had been “let down” by the Met. An independent force will review the Met’s handling of the new evidence.

Casey, who clashed with Rowley after he refused to accept her finding that the Met was “institutionally racist”, said: “It is absolutely extraordinary to me that anybody at all would question the findings of systemic organisational or institutional racism in the [Met]. It’s such a shame it wasn’t accepted and that we couldn’t figure out how to move on from it.

“There are endless examples of how a skin colour is treated differently. It’s not right in a city called London, [where] we are almost 50 per cent non-white, that we are not respecting the very people that our consent is connected with.”

Casey, who said she was “really concerned about victims” of crime, wished the commissioners well, adding: “I care so enormously about this issue. I care so much about frontline folks as well. Anything you can do to try to get people in a better place, that process would be absolutely fantastic.”