Over the weekend, a team of independent investigators published the findings of their report, describing a “toxic culture” among staff at Britain’s largest fire brigade. According to the findings, women and minority members working in the London fire department face serious harassment, hate speech and racism in the workplace.

The inquiry looked at testimonies from nearly two thousand current and former London firefighters. Specifically, 250 interviews, one hundred reviewed written presentations, and approximately 1,700 participants were surveyed.

Former Attorney General Nazir Afzal oversaw the investigation process. The process began in 2020 when rookie firefighter Jaden Francois-Esprit, who had requested a transplant sixteen times before his death and allegedly bullied because of his ethnicity, committed suicide in 2020.

Following the release of the report, lawyer Nazir Afzal called for a “national investigation” into a number of state-funded agencies, including the police, the NHS and the BBC, according to the Guardian. Afzal was independently told that the situation in other government agencies is similar to that of firefighters, few people working in these services.

The head of the London fire department, Andy Roe, has already responded to the report – he finds the results of the investigation “terrible” and according to him, people’s trust in the department is now “betrayed”. At the press conference, Roe also promised that the behavior described in the report would not be tolerated by the corps and that anyone found to be involved would be fired. According to the head of London’s fire brigade, from Monday an external and independent agency will begin investigating complaints and accusations of bullying and harassment of up to five years.

Of the stories that became the content of the report, Nazir Afzal was “nauseated”. British media, for example, talk about a woman drenched in a helmet being bullied by men, ridiculed, or locked in a body bag. According to the results of the investigation, this woman should have even removed her post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the ward. Other women were also allegedly beaten and groped.

Racism was defined, for example, by a black man whose colleagues hung a noose over his locker, among other things. An example often repeated in the British media is the story of a Muslim shoving pork (bacon and sausage) into his colleagues’ clothes.

Overall, the investigation revealed “a toxic culture that normalizes bullying and harassment” in the troops, according to Afzal.

The report also notes that out of a total of 5,000 staff on London wards, about 4,500 people work as firefighters, with only 425 women and just over 500 from the minority.

The Times newspaper writes that the news is not the first scandal involving British government institutions in recent years. As examples to others, he cites the case of Wayne Couzens, the police officer who murdered and raped Sarah Everard, or the uncontrolled fire at Grenfell Tower.