Exclusive: Serving senior officer speaks out about misogyny in policing

“The temptation is always there not to rock the boat, always toe the party line. I had to go with my conscience and be the person that spoke up.”

The words of Lizzie Jones, a serving police officer who has spoken exclusively to Channel 4 News about misogyny in policing.

Chief Inspector Jones joined the Metropolitan Police in 2006 because she wanted to protect the public, particularly women and girls.

But right from the start, she was having to protect herself against a sexist police station culture.

“You were preyed upon. It was all about who is attractive, what you were out of 10. It would be, ‘This woman is an 8 out of 10, but Lizzie is a 7 out of 10’. It was just open conversation about your attractiveness, or otherwise you can’t complain about your colleagues because your sergeant’s doing it as well.”

Her boss on Camden Robbery Squad at Kentish Town police station was Detective Sergeant James Mason. His conduct one night was typical of what she was encountering.

“I was at a custody suite. I was on my own dealing with a prisoner and I asked for a lift home from someone, or someone to help me charge this person, because the Tubes had all stopped and I couldn’t get back. So I messaged him and he said, ‘I’ll do anything for an attractive officer’.”

Asked if she challenged what was going on at the time, she said:

“No. I’d been groomed into thinking all these kinds of comments and behaviour towards me was just normal. And it was anything but normal.”

She says DS Mason’s behaviour around women officers was predatory. Yet the decorated police officer’s career in the Met progressed.

He became staff officer to Cressida Dick during her term as commissioner, and then a detective chief inspector.

But his behaviour finally began to catch up with him when Kristina O’Connor, the daughter of the entertainer Des O’Connor, reported a crime.

In October 2011, Ms O’Connor was assaulted in a Camden street by a gang of men trying to mug her.

Detective Sergeant James Mason was on the case but seemed more interested in pursuing her than her attackers, subjecting her to sexual advances.

He sent her emails from his police account calling her ‘my favourite Camden victim of crime’ and saying ‘coming onto crime victims is positively encouraged. It’s the rejection that’s frowned upon’.

Kristina O’Connor summoned the courage to complain to the Met in 2020, and in 2021 a misconduct panel found Mason guilty of eight breaches of behaviour standards amounting to gross misconduct.

He got a written warning but kept his job and his rank of detective chief inspector, choosing instead to resign in 2022.

Ms O’Connor went to court to challenge the disciplinary process, claiming that the Met’s investigation was flawed and the misconduct panel should have sacked him.

Chief Inspector Jones was by now a district commander with Kent Police and watched appalled as events unfolded. She was furious to see Mason’s misconduct towards Ms O’Connor being described as “uncharacteristic”, a one-off, isolated incident.

“And I was thinking in my head, well it wasn’t a one-off. That’s what he was like in general. I felt angry that he’d been portrayed in this way. I felt that it wasn’t remotely close to the truth, and I wanted people to know the truth about him.

“I just thought it was outrageous. It’s one thing to treat a police officer like that, but victims of crime, they’ve reported something really bad that’s happened to them and then to be sexually harassed. I mean, it’s beyond inappropriate. It goes to the very core of trust and confidence in police.”

Asked if he should have been dismissed, she said: “Yes, I think anyone that crosses that line and behaves like that towards a victim of crime shouldn’t be in the police.”

She complained to the Met, reporting what she knew about Mason’s pattern of behaviour.

These claims were evidence that should have been handed over to Kristina O’Connor’s lawyers.

But when the officer heard nothing from them, she became suspicious and reached the difficult decision to take matters into her own hands.

“I would have expected a phone call from them saying we’re interested in what you’ve got to say. But that never happened. I felt the Met had essentially covered up what I was saying. So I contacted her legal team directly.”

Asked if she was taking a professional risk doing that, she said: “Yes. That’s the heart of the problem. It shouldn’t be a professional risk for me to say this isn’t right.”

The step Chief Inspector Jones took prompted a further court hearing in October 2023 examining the issues she’d raised.

The Met Commissioner’s KC said that they apologised profusely for the late disclosure to the court of the allegations and they say that the information fell through the net.

Asked what she made of that, she said:

“I think there’s two options, and it’s either that they were so complacent that they did lose it, which is concerning, or they deliberately lost it.”

Which was most likely? “ I think they deliberately lost it.”

We said this was quite an astonishing allegation and asked if Commissioner Mark Rowley should be held responsible.

“I think there should definitely be an investigation to see what he knew, any influence that Cressida Dick had on this case as well.

“Because Mason was her staff officer. So I think they, both of them, should be involved in an independent one about what’s actually happened here.”

Kristina O’Connor lost her legal challenge to the decisions by the Commissioner and the misconduct panel in Mason’s case.

She appealed last month, with that judgment expected soon.

Meanwhile, Chief Inspector Jones knows the fight against misogyny in the police service goes on.

“I think it’s everywhere in this country, unfortunately. I think there’s an awful lot of men and women who are doing a great job. They literally come to work and just work hard. And I know that they exist because I see them every day. But there are still too many who are behaving in these kinds of ways.”

Asked what needed to happen as a result of her coming forward and risking her career to speak, she said:

“We’ve had the Casey report and the Angiolini report. It’s time to look at the recommendations and actually live them and not just say you are, and just face the uncomfortable truths and not try to sweep them under the carpet, like what’s been done with what I’ve been trying to say. So yes it’s a risk but I feel it’s worth taking.”

James Mason declined to comment.

The Metropolitan Police declined an interview but told us in a statement that former DCI Mason’s behaviour was “wholly unacceptable”.

It said: “The Met Police has not sought to justify the panel’s decision which we know continues to be subject to legal challenge. The Commissioner has made it clear that officers who abuse their position of trust and authority have no place in the Met.

“We have been entirely open about the challenges facing the Met. We know wrongdoing by our officers has a huge impact on the trust and confidence Londoners have in us.

“We have reformed our approach with a huge investment in professional standards officers and new ways of working to proactively find and investigate criminal and conduct matters involving our staff.

“We continue to encourage our officers and staff, and members of the public, to come forward and report wrongdoing so we can take action.”

The National Police Chiefs’ Council said: “Police officers and staff should always be held to the highest standards, with those who do not meet these standards swiftly identified and removed, we continue to work closely with our partners and colleagues to deliver these improvements.”