Mina Smallman has warned that the Metropolitan police still have “so much further to go” in uprooting racism and misogyny, three years after her daughters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry were murdered. The pair were attacked and stabbed to death while attending a birthday celebration at Wembley’s Fryent Country Park in June 2020. Their bodies were found the following day by Smallman’s boyfriend, the day after they had been reported missing to the police.

Smallman and Henry’s killer,  Danyal Hussein, was sentenced to a minimum of 35 years in prison in October 2020, and an Independent Office for Police Conduct report into the police’s handling of the case also found that that the service provided to Smallman and Henry’s family was “below the standard that it should have been”.

Two Met police officers – PC Deniz Jaffer and PC Jamie Lewis – were jailed for two years and nine months each at the end of 2021, after it was revealed that they had taken photos of the sisters’ dead bodies and sent them to other officers via WhatsApp. 

Speaking ahead of the launch of the Alliance for Police Accountability on Thursday, Smallman acknowledged that “there has been an increased seriousness over vetting, for example, and I know they are working towards a better system of care for victims of domestic abuse and rape, but there is still so much further to go”.

The alliance will see Black community organisations and esteemed individuals from across the UK working collaboratively to fight racist, misogynistic and homophobic policing.

Smallman also said a lack of acceptance and transparency continued to persist in the Met, and that it was a “huge disappointment” that Sir Mark Rowley, the Met police commissioner, refused to accept there was “institutional racism” in the force.

Earlier this year, the Casey report, which was commissioned by the Met following the murder of Sarah Everard, found damning evidence that the force is “institutionally racist, homophobic and misogynistic”.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said of the report: “Baroness Casey has found institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia, which I accept. She has described the Met as defensive, resistant to change and unwilling to engage with communities.”

He added that he would be “unflinching” in holding Rowley to account.

Rowley himself has pledged widespread police reform, stating: “I recognise the scale of the damage to public trust that has taken place and the significant work we still have to do in order to restore it. I have been impressed by the determination and support of the tens of thousands of women and men who work in the Met … to deliver the change we need.”

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