Adrian PolglaseBBC Panorama and
Joseph Lee
Serving Metropolitan Police officers called for immigrants to be shot, revelled in the use of force and were dismissive of rape claims in footage captured by a Panorama undercover reporter.
The evidence of misogyny and racism challenges the Met’s promise to have tackled what it calls “toxic behaviours” after the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer.
Panorama’s secret filming shows officers making sexualised comments to colleagues and sharing racist views about immigrants and Muslims.
This evidence reveals that, far from being driven out of the Met, racist and misogynistic attitudes have been driven underground. “Someone new joins, boom, mask on. You’ve got to figure them out,” one officer said.
After the BBC sent a detailed list of allegations to the Met, it suspended eight officers and one staff member, and took two more officers off front-line duties. Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the behaviour outlined by Panorama was, “disgraceful, totally unacceptable and contrary to the values and standards” of the force.
Warning: This story contains repeated use of highly offensive and discriminatory language
Among the officers filmed by our undercover reporter were:
- Sgt Joe McIlvenny, an officer with nearly 20 years’ service in the Met, who was dismissive about a pregnant woman’s allegations of rape and domestic violence, after a colleague raised concerns about the decision to release the accused man on bail. He replied: “That’s what she says.”
- PC Martin Borg, who enthusiastically described how he saw another officer, Sgt Steve Stamp, stomp on a suspect’s leg. PC Borg laughed when he described how he had offered to make a statement saying the suspect had tried to kick the sergeant first. It was unclear from CCTV footage if the claim was true.
- PC Phil Neilson, who told our reporter in the pub that a detainee who had overstayed his visa should have “a bullet through his head” and “ones that shag, rape women, you’d do the cock and let them bleed out”.
BBC Panorama’s undercover reporter, Rory Bibb, spent seven months up to January this year as a designated detention officer (DDO) in the custody suite of Charing Cross police station in central London. It is a civilian role which involves working closely with sergeants and constables, but not taking part in arrests.
Charing Cross has one of the Met’s 22 custody suites where people are held after arrest and before they are charged or released. It is often a volatile environment where officers deal with violent people and vulnerable individuals, including young people and those with mental health issues.
The station had been the focus of an investigation by the police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), into bullying and discrimination nearly four years ago. It found that some officers had discussed hitting their girlfriends, shared offensive and discriminatory comments and joked about rape in private group chats.
Whistleblowers told Panorama that officers with racist and misogynistic attitudes still worked at the station despite the Met’s promise to root out “rogue officers” and “cultural failings”.
‘Terrifying’ misogyny
Sergeants are in charge of the custody suite day-to-day and are responsible for upholding the Met’s values and ethical standards.
One of them at Charing Cross was Sgt McIlvenny, who was repeatedly filmed while on duty displaying misogynistic attitudes.
He talked to colleagues in graphic terms about his sex life, telling the undercover reporter and a female colleague about a woman he said he met online: “She fucking fills the door, almost like monstrous.” He added that she was “so fat she had two pussies. There’s the real one and then the fat one round it.”
He talked about how he got sexual pleasure from having his nipples played with, despite the objections of some female colleagues in earshot.
Discussing having his nipples pierced, he said: “My pain tolerance goes up massively if I’m aroused at the same time. So, I’m going to ask them if I can have a wank…”
As custody sergeant, Sgt McIlvenny is responsible for making decisions about whether a suspect is remanded in custody or given bail after being charged.
When a female DDO questioned a decision to release on bail a man alleged to have raped his girlfriend, she pointed out he had also been accused of kicking the pregnant woman in the stomach. Sgt McIlvenny responded: “That’s what she says.” Panorama does not have the full details of the case.
The female DDO later told the undercover reporter about her anger at the sergeant’s response. “The way he went, ‘Yeah, it’s what she says.’ He fucking stamped on her stomach when she was pregnant,” she said.
“I’d like to turn round and go, ‘You wanker. You’re a wanker.’ But, unfortunately, I can’t. He’s got stripes on his shoulders.”
Sue Fish, who was temporary chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police and previously ran misconduct hearings, reviewed Panorama’s footage and said the sergeant’s sexualised comments were “completely inappropriate, very misogynistic”.
Discussing his comment about the rape and domestic violence allegations, she said: “As a woman as well as a former police officer, individuals like him have the power to make these sorts of decisions about my safety or other women’s safety and that is terrifying.”
Ms Fish has previously spoken about her experience of twice being sexually assaulted by colleagues, once as a junior officer and on another occasion when holding a senior role. Under her leadership, in 2016 Nottinghamshire Police became the first force to record misogyny as a hate crime.
In January this year, while the BBC’s undercover reporter was working in the station, Sgt McIlvenny was told he was being investigated for inappropriate comments he had allegedly made to a woman in custody.
Custody staff told our undercover reporter that the woman was Asian and that Sgt McIlvenny had said to her that she should be in the “massage business”. British Transport Police officers had reported him, the custody staff said.
But last month, before Panorama informed the Met of its findings, the sergeant told the BBC’s reporter that he was back working in the custody suite.
‘Red mist’
The BBC’s undercover reporter repeatedly filmed officers revelling in the use of force, revealing a culture of confidence and trust that colleagues would not blow the whistle on them.
Police officers can use force, but only when it is “proportionate and reasonable in all the circumstances”, according to their Standards of Professional Behaviour.
Over a few drinks in a nearby pub while off duty, PC Martin Borg described how a man arrested for impersonating a police officer and attempted kidnap, and who was judged to be a suicide risk, had been restrained.
PC Borg said the man had spat at officers and urinated on the door of the cell, so officers pinned him down on the floor. While he was “kicking out”, Sgt Steve Stamp, nicknamed “Stampy”, brought his boot down on the man’s leg, the constable said.
The undercover reporter was able to examine footage from CCTV cameras in the custody suite, which showed the sergeant stamping down twice.
“This guy’s fucking screamed,” said PC Borg. “He had a lump on his foot that looked like a fucking tumour mate, afterwards.” Recalling that the detainee had protested that the sergeant stamped on his leg, he remembered saying: “Yeah he fucking did, you cunt.”
PC Borg said the sergeant had told him afterwards that the suspect had tried to kick him. “Absolutely Sarge,” he recalled saying. “I’ll put that in the MG11 if you like Sarge?”
An MG11 is a witness statement. Ms Fish, the former chief constable, said if PC Borg had put fabricated information in it, which could be shown to be false, that would be “perverting the course of justice or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice”.
It is not clear in the CCTV footage if the man had tried to kick Sgt Stamp. The man had bare feet and four officers were restraining him at the time.
One officer described how, if suspects refuse to have their fingerprints taken, he could pull two of their fingers hard to snap the tendons. “I love taking fingerprints by force,” he said.
Another constable, meeting the undercover reporter in the canteen for the first time, described how a suspect had elbowed him in the face, so he had “whacked the shit out of the back of his legs” as he stood up in the van, wearing leg restraints.
“Just fucking just like five or six strikes,” he said. “It wasn’t a good look. There’s definitely a little bit of red mist there. But nothing came of it.”
‘They’re just scum’
Over drinks in the pub, officers expressed racist, anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim views.
On one occasion, PC Borg was in the pub talking about suspects in custody who were from ethnic minorities. When asked which group caused the most grief, he answered “Muslims”.
“Hate us. They fucking hate us. Proper hate us,” he said. “Islam is a problem. A serious problem, I think.”
Police standards say officers’ behaviour must not “discredit the police service or undermine public confidence, whether on or off duty”.
PC Phil Neilson, a constable with the West End team, was initially wary of sharing his views with the undercover reporter. Only half joking, PC Neilson asked the reporter if he was a member of the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards.
Two weeks later, PC Neilson and Rory met again at the pub, where the constable described how he did not mind Ukrainian people fleeing to the UK from the war. But he had an entirely different view of people arriving from the Middle East. “They’re just scum,” he said, on his second pint, claiming that it was “an invasion”.
“God, we’d so lose our jobs right now,” PC Neilson added.
Over the course of the evening and as PC Neilson drank more, his views remained consistent, but he expressed them in more extreme ways – and even violent ones.
He said Algerians were “scum” and “cunts”, Somalis were “scum” and “fucking ugly”, adding: “I think any foreign person is the worst to deal with.”
A couple of drinks later, PC Neilson shared his views on Islam. “I’ve seen too many Islamics committing crimes. Their way of life is not the correct way of life,” he said.
“You do find that the ones that are causing the most crime are Muslim.”
Police standards also require officers not to discriminate unlawfully or unfairly. The Home Office and police do not publish statistics on general arrest rates by religious communities.
PC Neilson said of a detainee he was dealing with who had overstayed his visa, “Fucking either put a bullet through his head or deport him.”
He added: “A revolver. A revolver would be so nice… And the ones that shag, rape women, you’d do the cock and let them bleed out.”
Former chief constable Ms Fish said that she was “appalled and disgusted” and that the constable was a “violent racist.”
“I have absolutely no confidence in him as a police officer whatsoever. To be frank, not much as a human being,” she said.
‘The real you comes out’
Despite several officers sharing discriminatory and unprofessional views, some made it clear they were aware of the need to conceal their real opinions.
On one occasion, Sgt McIlvenny warned the undercover reporter not to make reference to the use of force against suspects in ways that might be captured by CCTV and microphones within the police station.
The sergeant had punched a man in the leg who was being forcibly searched, and the undercover reporter said afterwards: “I saw your little dig in the back of the leg.”
A few minutes later, Sgt McIlvenny took the reporter into a corridor away from the cameras and microphones in custody. “Be careful debriefing use of force in the suite,” he said. “It doesn’t sound great if it’s played back later on down the line.”
“Don’t fucking talk us all into a fucking big complaint,” the sergeant added.
In the pub, one of the longest-serving officers Rory meets, PC Brian Sharkey, was drinking with colleagues who were joking about disciplinary complaints and making sexual innuendos.
“If you go down for a sexual assault, you might as well go down for rape,” PC Sharkey interjected, before checking himself and saying it was a joke. “That was a bit wrong. I challenge myself on that.”
The constable later addressed the undercover reporter: “Now who can I fucking trust here? You’re the fucking new boy,” before shutting down discussion of another incident.
Another officer told the undercover reporter he was cautious when talking to a new colleague. “You have to put the mask of speaking factual, and then when you get on with them, it comes off and then the real you, comes out,” he said.
The BBC wrote to the Metropolitan Police detailing the evidence gathered during the seven-month investigation.
Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said his force had taken “immediate and unprecedented action to investigate these allegations”. It referred the allegations to the IOPC, whose director Amanda Rowe said: “We are treating this matter extremely seriously.”
Sir Mark said the Met has “dismantled the custody team at Charing Cross”, adding that more than 1,400 officers and staff have left or been dismissed since 2022 for failing to meet the Met’s standards, “the biggest clear-out in the force’s history”.
“Much more needs to be done to tackle the individuals and cliques whose appalling behaviour continues to let down their colleagues and Londoners,” he said. “Our resolve to identify, confront and get rid of them is absolute.”
Panorama also wrote to the individual officers identified in this article. They have not responded.
After Sarah Everard was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a serving police officer in 2021, a review of the Met by Baroness Louise Casey concluded it was institutionally racist, homophobic and misogynistic.
Sir Mark Rowley accepted the review’s recommendations, but at the time did not accept that the problems were “institutional”.
In 2022, the force was put into special measures by the police inspectorate, a form of enhanced scrutiny which ended in January this year. At the time, Sir Mark said the force was making “massive progress”.
Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who also reviewed Panorama’s footage, said he was struck how high standards, values and discipline “didn’t seem to be present or being inculcated by the people who were in authority”, referring to the sergeants.
He said the behaviour of these officers undermined policing by consent and made the job harder in the long run.
The former chief constable, Ms Fish, said: “I’ve seen enough to say there is a highly toxic culture there of hyper-sexualised male behaviour, misogyny, racism, and gratuitous, unlawful violence.”
She said the Met leadership had never grasped “the significance, the scale and impact” of this culture. “It’s always been a rotten apple, not a rotten barrel,” she said.
