A WATCHDOG raised “serious concerns” about the performance of the Metropolitan Police today after it found that the force was failing in several areas of its work.

His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) called for urgent improvements after finding the force inadequate in the way it responds to the public.

The watchdog said the Met required improvement in investigating crime, protecting vulnerable people and managing offenders among other concerns.

It comes three months after HMICFRS placed the Met into special measures amid persistent concerns about its performance.

Black Activists Rising Against Cuts co-founder Zita Holbourne said that the findings are not a surprise to black and other marginalised communities.

She said: “Black communities are most likely to be targeted by police and accused wrongly of being guilty of crimes and receive the least support when victims of crime but due to the racial profiling, brutalisation and abuse our communities encounter at the hands of police.

“It is also very difficult to place any faith in them when we are the victims of crime.”

She raised the case of Siyanda Mngaza, who was “failed by an institutionally racist judicial system” after being arrested while approaching the police for help following a racist attack.

Ms Holbourne also highlighted the recent murder by police of Chris Kaba, the heavy-handed actions of officers towards women protesting over the brutal killing of Sarah Everard by one of their own, and the scandal of police taking photos of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.

“We ask again and again, who polices the police?” she said.

“How can we trust the law when police are a law to their own?”

Stop Watch research and policy manager Habib Kadiri said the concerns raised “echo that of a growing cross-section of Londoners.”

He said: “This includes ethnic minorities, especially those living in marginalised communities who are repeatedly targeted through stop and search, women subjected to violence who are made to feel guilty by the police, [and] gay people who feel underprotected in the light of the murders carried out by Stephen Port.

“And [it includes] those exercising their ever-diminishing lawful right to protest against such injustices.

“The city feels unsafe for more and more of its inhabitants, not because of a rising tide of crime, but because of the Met abuses of power.”

The Met said it was committed to tackling the problems highlighted in the report.

A Home Office spokesperson called the findings “deeply concerning,” and said the Met must make the necessary improvements urgently.

The Met has seen public outrage over its racist, sexist and homophobic messages shared by a group of officers at Charring Cross station between 2016 and 2018.

And questions have been raised over the Met’s approach to tackling corruption inside the force and its disproportional use of stop and search on black and ethnic minority individuals.

Multiple investigations also continue into deaths following police contact, including that of Mr Kaba.

On Wednesday a judge branded comments made by a serving Met officer and a former constable “sickening” and “abhorrent” as they were convicted of sending grossly offensive messages in a WhatsApp group with Ms Everard’s killer.

In the wake of her murder, two separate reviews into the Met are taking place and HMICFRS is also reviewing vetting procedures used by all forces in England and Wales.