Media Storm - What happened when Issy Vine whistleblew on The Met

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Issy Vine was a staff officer with the Metropolitan Police in South London. A series of incidents with a male colleague in her call handling team back in 2023 has sent her on a two year journey to try and find justice. Issy has not only been fighting for justice, but fighting for media attention for her story. She has since founded community organisation Speak Up Now, which supports whistleblowers in public and emergency services.  Issy's story is one about standing up against misogyny, and against long enforced power structures. To find out more, follow her here. The Met Police said: "The concerns Isabelle raised about the meeting with the Director have been assessed and found not to amount to misconduct. The conduct of the Appeal panel has also been assessed and found not to amount to misconduct". The episode is hosted and produced by Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠ Support us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here.

Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-draining tread plus at OnePeloton.ca. Please note, this episode contains themes of misogyny, sexual harassment, and mentions of rape. Hi, Media Stormers, it's Helena here. We've got something very special for you today.

An in-depth interview with Izzy Vine. Izzy was a staff officer with the Metropolitan Police in South London. An incident with a male staff officer in her. call handling team back in 2023, has sent her on a two-year journey to try and find justice. Izzy has not only been fighting for justice, but fighting for media attention for her story. She has since founded Community Organization Speak Up Now, which supports whistleblowers in public and emergency services. At points in this interview, you will hear Izzy reference Sarah Everard.

Sarah Everard was abducted, raped and murdered by a serving metropolitan police officer back in March 2021, in Clapham in South London. Wayne Cousins will never be released from prison. A rare whole-life term because he perverted his power as a police officer. At the time, this seemed like a watershed moment for policing, an event so shocking that it could only lead to rapid reflection and urgent change. Since Sarah's death, we have learned of violent crimes against women and girls from ex-and-serving police officers. Some worked in the police force for decades, committing multiple sexual offences

with seemingly no consequences for them. We also heard about a bullying, racist and sexist culture within policing and saw WhatsApp messages and group chats between male officers or staff members filled with appalling and disturbing messages. An alarming number of female officers reports alleged appalling behaviour by male colleagues, allegations from inappropriate comments to serious sexual assault. Izzy's story is one about standing up against misogyny and against long-enforced power structures. So, in her own words, this week's media storm, what happened when Izzy Vy?

whistleblum on the Met. I started off as a call handler in February 2020, just as COVID was sort of kicking off in England and I left about six months ago. So just under five years. So you're filtering and taking the calls from the public, 101 calls, which is like non-emergency and 999 calls, which is emergency calls. And then sort of midway and my career, I went into dispatching, which was talking with the officers over the radio, handling live incidents, that kind of thing, and speaking with helicopters and stuff. So, yeah, I did those two roles, call handling and dispatching. I sat next to a colleague one day

in April. You don't have your own desk. It's just like you get whatever desk is there, and if there's spaces, there's spaces. I didn't know his name, I'd never spoken to him before, but I'd seen him once or twice. And what was your first interaction with this colleague? Yeah, just Small talk. Hi, how are you? How long have you worked here? That sort of thing. We were doing the same shift together, same sort of time, 11 to 11. I don't know how to describe it, but like, I did have funny vibes from him from the start because I would be talking to my friend on the other side and talking about things and the conversation would be like obviously just for me and her and he would be leaning in between us and like listening in and like maybe a bit strange. But it was

fine. Izzy carried on her shift as usual, but over the course of the shift, three things happened that kicked off the chain of events that would change Izzy's life. The first incident. He was taking an online report where someone had written in and said they'd been raped by their partner at the time and they'd given them STI and got them pregnant. And he kind of like nudged me and said, oh, take a look at this report. And like his screen was a distance away. So I sort of squinted to have a look and then he got his hand, covered his mouth and said she sounds like a slap. Her hindsight is like so good and so irritating at the same time because I wish I sort of just stood up then and there but I was so shocked that I was just like uh and then just sort of carried on with my

work but you have the thing with the Met and I think it's with all call centres in emergency services is that the demand is so high like you just can't take breaks in between calls you just have to take call, cool, cool. Otherwise, supervisors will come over to you and say, like, what are you doing? You need to take the next call. So I was conscious, like, I don't want to get in trouble. So I just took more calls and sort of just put it to the back of my head for that moment. The second incident. A couple of hours go by, and he got a call from someone who just arrived to the country. And a lot of people ring their police when they don't know what to do or who to talk to or where to get anything from. And he said, I just took a call from an immigrant.

I was like, oh, okay. And then he said, can I be unkind? And I was like, what? He got his phone out and then he got his notes out and he wrote, why don't you F off back to your own country. I think I gained a bit more courage them because I kind of tried to divert it and say, that's really harsh. A lot of people, maybe they don't get told, this is where you go now and this is what you do now and this is where you go. And then I think he could tell that I was obviously not of the same opinion. So he was like, okay, maybe I'm being harsh. And then it was really awkward. I just sort of like moved my body to the side and like gave really like frosty body language like don't talk to me and yeah shift went on the third incident this

just gave me absolute shivers i was taking a call in the southwest london area and on my second screen i had the whole of south london wonsworth merton brixton boxall all on my screen and whilst i was on the phone trying to take directions of a suspect running off and it happened to be in clapham he came into like behind me but in my ear, oh, that's Sarah Everard's turf, with no context, like, not even that it's appropriate anyway, but completely mimicking and dehumanising that whole situation. The shift ended. We finished at the same time, and I knew I had to report it somehow, so I thought, right, I'm going to hang back for about 10, 15 minutes, talk to another collie, see what I should do. I don't know how to report this. I've never been told how to do it. And also, I wanted to

wait because I didn't want to bump into him outside. My supervisors had gone home. There were supervisors I didn't know. I was conscious I had like eight hours till my next shift. So I was like, I need to run home and get some sleep. Process this and come back tomorrow and report it to people I knew. In the initial part of the shift when we were having small talk, he told me he'd lived one specific direction, which is in the opposite way of me and got a completely different bus,

which went in the completely different direction. And that's his straight route home straight to his door set. So I was like, great. Like, I'm not going to bump into him on the train, thank God, or anything like that. So I hung back, went outside and walked to my bus stop and he was at his bus stop which was opposite the road

thank God my bus was approaching and he shan't over the road when's your bus coming and I was like oh it's here I'm going by jumped on the bus close the doors the bus kind of like moved off and all of a sudden I heard banging as if someone's you know missed it and is trying to bang it down

and the bus stopped and open the doors and he got He came and plonked himself next to me, and I said, why are you on this bus? You don't, you said you get the other bus straight home, like, why, what are you doing? And he was like, I'm coming your way tonight. At that point, I was just like,

well, I'm going to have to be friendly because I'm not in the familiar environment of the workplace. It was dead out, 11 p.m. on like a Tuesday or Wednesday. Pitch black, and I'm just with him on this empty bus. He sits next to me. I'm just trying to like, be friendly just to make it fine.

Can you describe the feeling in your body when he gets on the bus and he deliberately sits next to you? No, like just so anxious inside because obviously it's slowly escalating into like just sitting next to me at work and saying offensive comments to then literally getting on my bus home and telling me he's coming my way.

I felt like it's slowly, slowly escalating so I just don't know where it's going to go and like where it's going to stop. Is he going to say, I'm coming to your house or try and do something? I just was numb and I was out of body and I was just being friendly and being nice. And I kind of had to be out of body because I didn't want to be friendly and nice to him, because I didn't know what was going to happen. I had to.

If you're listening to this, you might be thinking, why didn't Izzy yell at him or tell him that he was being inappropriate or push him into an answer about why he changed buses and sat next to her? But more likely, if you're a woman, especially, and listening to this, you know exactly why Izzy felt like she had to be friendly. We often talk about fight or flight in a situation that we perceive to be potentially dangerous. But there are actually many more instinctive survival mechanisms than just fight or flight. There's also freeze or friend.

Friend includes befriending the person who is dangerous. for example, by using small talk and placating them. So he got my first bus and then the first tube. And then after the first stop, I just ran off it and got the tube after. Izzy jumped off the tube at the last second to avoid having to speak to the man anymore. The next day, Izzy went in for her shift, worried about bumping into him again and looked for the best way to report him. But she felt confused.

What exactly was she reporting him for? In the wake of Sarah Everard, it wasn't like it happened straight away after, but it was still very heavy and still very raw. And I do feel like how I processed it, that maybe I was a little bit confused on what it was because I was comparing it to the extreme of what had happened to poor Sarah Everard. And so I was like, oh, well, it's not like that.

So it's not that bad because obviously he's not done that. But I knew I wouldn't have never reported it because of that. But that was just giving me a bit confusion. But I went in and spent the first sort of hour trying to like scroll on the intranet and the portal on ways to report it. But it wasn't very clear. So I just went out to a supervisor. Izzy was eventually told to put her complaint in an email. Then she was told to go home because of her.

the man she had complained about was coming in for his shift in a couple of hours. Izzy then had a week's holiday already booked, but she didn't receive any updates on her complaint. She went back to work after the week. That first day I went back. I was very paranoid, like, looking around, like, didn't know what was going on. I even asked my line managers to find out what was going on. He said, I don't know. I'm trying to ask the department that's supposedly dealing with it, the professional standards, and they're not responding, or they're not open or no one's in. One of the shifts I went back, they asked me to work in a specific department and I looked over across the room where that department was and he was there and I burst out

crying. I was like, I actually can't because I've complained about someone over there. And they were like, oh, it's you because we know that this guy has had a complaint made against him, but we didn't know who it was. So other people knew that there had been a complaint made about this man. Did he know there was a complaint made against him? That's another thing that like triggered my breakdown on that day as well is that he knew he'd been told that a complaint that had been made about him the whole ins and out so he knew it was me because it couldn't have been anyone else and he'd been given a welfare officer and an investigation officer and they gave him a welfare officer because they didn't want him to like have a breakdown because he might lose his job

but i'd had nothing no no welfare officer no investigation officer no we've received your complaint nothing izzie signed herself off as sick as the thought of working alongside this man was much. After three weeks, four since the original complaint, an investigation officer got in touch with Izzy. The officer asked Izzy to confirm what had happened, but there was something missing from Izzy's report. They didn't count the following home or any incident after work because they said that it needs to happen more than once for it to be any type of harassment or conduct issue. The whole course of that day was just one big. escalation period from inappropriate buttons to conversations about women's bodies to then

making offensive comments about rape victims to then racism to then mimicking a rape victim who'd been abducted raped and murdered and then following changing his journey and telling me he's coming my way home that was a complete escalation of predatory alarming dangerous behaviour I don't understand why it meant nothing to them but it did I'm lost for words. I don't understand it. I still don't understand it why they didn't care about that part. I'm looking into it? Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online.

Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. Maybe it's just a phase you're going through. You'll get over it. I can't help you with that. The next appointment is in six months. You're not alone. Finding mental health support shouldn't leave you feeling more lost.

At CAMH, we know how frustrating it can be trying to access care. We're working to build a future where the path to support is clear, and every step forward feels like progress, not another wrong turn. Visit camh.ca to help us forge a better path for mental health care. As the investigation into the male officer's comments at work went on, Izzy's superiors agreed to move him to another center. Six months go by. And then the man who Izzy complained about was dismissed for gross misconduct. I felt really grateful that the MET believed me.

I had to show my text messages of who I'd spoken to, what I'd said, my distress, voice notes of me, like upset at the time, just my credibility and stuff. Also, I was told he tried to tell the investigation that I'm a malicious complainer, but I'd never made a complaint in my life. And they even knew that because I had to ask how to do it.

And then on the complaint system, I'd never done that. So all these, like, stupid things that he was trying to do just discredited to him even more. So I was really grateful and I was really proud and I was like, yay, I'm part of a force that's actually doing what they say. They're not just giving out stupid press conferences that please the public.

But Izzy's relief was short-lived. Four months go by, I put it to bed and I'm busy working and I get taken out for a five-minute meeting to tell me that he'd appealed he'd won. and he'd been rehired and he'd been awarded all his pay that he'd lost in the six months he was dismissed and he was currently taking a month and a half annual leave

of what he'd accumulated in those six months of being dismissed. When they told me, I was just crying because I couldn't understand why you're rehiring someone like this. If you do an interview to get into the police and you displayed his behaviours and said what he said, you would not get it and it's completely contradictory to policing ethics.

Did that mean that you? he was going to come back and work in the same department as you? That's literally the first thing I asked. I said, what does this mean for me? They said, we don't know, sorry. He's on a month and a half annual leave, so we'll let you know before he comes back, but we're not really sure.

Izzy asked who rehired the male staff officer she had made complaints about. She was told it was the decision of the director of met command and control, the big frontline department covering call handling and dispatching. Izzy met with the director to seek answer. Though the director told Izzy that her colleague's comments amounted to misconduct still, he didn't think that they were gross misconduct, and therefore his job had been reinstated. After Izzy questioned why slut-shaming, misogynistic, anti-immigrant and inappropriate comments

from a person with a duty of care to the general public didn't amount to gross misconduct, The director said to Izzy, I think you can have any opinion you want on work in the Met no matter how harmful. It's when it escalates into an action that it becomes problematic. Basically saying like if you're not a Wayne Cousins, then it won't be gross misconduct or anything like that. I just thought, wow, like we are never ever going to get rid

of misogyny, sexism, racism, violence in policing. We're just never, with this mindset of when it's awful and we're kind of exposed for it, will do something. Other comments from the director also concerned Izzy. The original panel that dismissed him were two women and a man from HR. And he said that the original panel were too influenced by violence against women and girls and the Casey report. And I was like, isn't that the whole point to take those things into consideration when dealing with misconducting and criminals? And he was like, no, I just think they were too harsh,

too harsh. I took it as the women made the wrong decision because the women were. were too led by that and maybe not of sound mind or just, I don't know, related more to those things than a man would so couldn't make the right decision. That's what I was getting from him. Everything he was saying was making me cry and I was so irritated with myself inside because I'm falling into that stereotype. You feel like women are too emotional and what you're doing to me is making me an emotional woman and like I found it really, I don't know how to say like really psychologically torturing because I was trying everything in my heart to not quiet but I couldn't help it because I was so shocked and now I'm doing it again after that

meeting with the director I was so upset and distressed just like another layer of me just stripped away I took another month off because I was so confused and really I couldn't go back to work knowing all of this it just felt really like I always say it felt really fraudulent. I took some time off and then when I came back, I made a complaint as I did in the beginning, but about the director and what he said. From this point on, Izzy describes the complaints process as a circus. After a few months of ping ponging her around, including colleagues trying to dissuade Izzy from complaining about someone in such a high-up position, Izzy was told that her complaint did contain areas of concern and not,

Not only would her recent complaints about the director be looked at by someone very senior in the Met, but her initial one about the male staff officer would be as well. Five months go by, and Izzy decides to follow up with the senior person who was reviewing her complaints. But to her shock, they didn't even know who she was. They were like, who are you? We don't know who you are. What complaint? We don't even know your situation. So I found out basically that my report of concerns about the director was buried for five months and not until I'd just gone myself to find out what was going on, that it activated that process, I guess.

And I was just mentally all over the place. I was having panic attacks. I know it sounds really stupid. Every sort of mousy-haired, 35-year-old man, the same sort of height, if I'd seen around the corner, I'd double look and I'd be like, oh my God, he's back. Had to go to a psychiatrist at work and they said, yeah, you've got post-trauma. I was having flashbacks of that day, like, rethinking, like, did it actually happen? Like, have I made it all up? I was having nightmares about having to work with him.

When I'd walked towards the building, I'd start shaking. The building physically made me want to throw up. And he got so bad to the point where I was seeing policemen and police staff. And the uniform and the concept of policing was making me feel sick and was making, it was irritating me and it was triggering me. And when I'd see, like, a workshop on violence against women and girls and misogyny in the met, I would start to get really angry. and I couldn't focus on my job doing that.

Like, it was just not appropriate. Due to her mental health, Izzy asked to be taken off Manning Live Incidents and to be put on a low-risk role. She was for a while, but then soon was put back on dispatching for high-risk calls. It was then that she handed in her notice, but the circus continues.

I got an email basically saying, we don't think anything the director said was wrong. I'm sorry, you feel that way, but we do acknowledge that your report wasn't actioned for the first five months, and all we can say is sorry. The only thing I can do now is just ask you for a rationale as to why you don't think the director's comments are bad.

And they said, nope, we're not going to give that to you. It wouldn't be useful. And that's it. And at that point, I said, I'm not engaging with you anymore. It's just becoming, like, toxic now because I'm not getting anywhere clearly. Do you feel like you've got any sort of closure? No, no.

No, no, and a lot of people said, oh my God, this is your identity, be careful, you're just consumed in it. Like, how can I not be? Because this isn't just like something that happened at work. This is something that could then trickle on and affect everyone, including myself as a normal member of public. I guess I'm able to process this and now I'm able to speak out and talk about it and tell people about it. Whereas before, when it was just all in my own head and, you know, now I can like freely speak. it's easier to process it, but I, sadly, like, I won't have closure until the MET are held accountable for this in any way, legally or socially. Tell me about founding Speak Up Now.

As I started to speak out about it online, loads of other police officers, police staff, doctors, local council, people with all their different missile-blowing stories were coming to me and saying, oh, this has happened, it's so bad, like, I'm sorry, I've had the same. And the more I got and the more horrendous ones I got, a million times worse than my case, I was like, I'm just not having it. So I set up, speak up now UK, with the goal to platform people's stories anonymously so that everyone can have a little bit of insight into what goes on. But also to give workshops, hopefully to employers and organisations to their employees, to educate them a little bit about whistleblowing and how to do it and how to look after your mental health when you're doing it

and navigating it because organizations don't give you that because they don't want you to do it. And I think that's cruel. I think if you're going to have employees, you need to make sure they have all the resources they'll need. And that includes speaking out or standing up to you if there's someone that's dodgy or wrong in the organisation. And to deprive employees of that is silencing them. I guess indirectly that helps me because I don't want to just sit with my experience for the rest of my life. I couldn't do that. And I would need to turn it into something if I can't get closure against them at, then I'll maybe help other people get closure. I'm trying to move it away from my story now because it's not about me and my story anymore. It's about everyone else's

stories and the cracks in authority and power. And, you know, speak up now is very passionate about fairness isn't internal and we shouldn't have internal professional standards in public and emergency services. Like it's just weird how we let them mark their own homework. So we've got a petition running to abolish internal professional standards and hopefully have an independent body that would investigate public and emergency services and make it mandatory to have an external whistleblowing workshops. So yeah, I mean, we're just trying to push for that

because in what world is it right that police can investigate police? It just isn't. If you want to support Izzy or sign the petition, you can follow her on Instagram at Izzy Vine and follow Speak Up Now at Speak Up Now UK. Next week, we will be bringing you an investigation into worker exploitation and the commodification

of education at SOAS University in London. Stay tuned. Thank you for listening. If you want to support Media Storm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout-outs to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone.

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