More than 2,000 complaints and misconduct allegations have been made about the Metropolitan Police’s disgraced firearms squad in the past six years – but only five officers have been sacked.

MO19 was one of two units given a damning assessment in last year’s Casey review, which was commissioned after Sarah Everard’s rape and murder by serving Met officer Wayne Couzens in 2021.

Now, new data obtained by openDemocracy lays bare the scale of the problems in the firearms unit, a department where Casey said “normal rules do not seem to apply”.

Our figures show the Met received 1,807 complaints against firearms officers from members of the public between 2018 and November 2023. It launched 419 investigations, suggesting multiple complaints were made about some of the alleged incidents.

The force received a further 209 allegations relating to ‘conduct matters’, which are potential disciplinary or criminal matters usually flagged by colleagues. These led to 111 investigations.

Public complaints are categorised vaguely. There were 570 relating to police powers, policies and procedures, 71 about individual behaviours, and 329 about oppressive or discriminatory behaviour.

The Met’s most common response to public complaints was to insist that “the service provided was acceptable”.

Only 73 were taken forward, of which only seven resulted in formal action. Two officers were sacked. The most common resolution is described as “learning from reflection”.

With the conduct matters, 42 related to discreditable conduct, 30 were about oppressive or discriminatory behaviour and 13 regarded the use of force.

Of the 209 cases, 45 led to formal action taken, with three officers sacked.

The exact number of officers in MO19 is not known, though in 2018 there were reported to be close to 850.

Becka Hudson, a criminal justice researcher at Birkbeck University, said: “How can those who suffer mistreatment by police expect any justice when thousands of complaints land us with just five officers taken off the streets?”

She added: “Let us be clear, these are officers with lethal weapons – a relaxed attitude to misconduct here has serious consequences. When are we going to get the kind of institutional overhaul required to meet the scale of this problem?”

The MO19 firearms unit has been involved in numerous scandals in recent years, of which Everard’s murder is the most recent.

It was an officer from MO19 – known only as Officer NX121 – who shot and killed Chris Kaba, a 24-year-old Black man, in south-west London in September 2022. After he was charged with murder in September, colleagues in the unit downed their weapons in protest, leading then-home secretary Suella Braverman to speak out in support of them and commission a review into armed policing.

Another officer from the unit, under its previous title of CO19, shot and killed Mark Duggan in 2011, sparking the London riots.

Deborah Coles, director of the charity INQUEST, told openDemocracy that the new figures “reinforce concerns about the toxic culture operating within the firearms unit and how racist, misogynistic, and oppressive behaviour is not being addressed”.

She added: “It also points to the lack of oversight and accountability of these firearms officers, how they act as a law unto themselves and the ongoing risks this poses to the public. They are incapable of reform and need complete overhaul.”

Coles’ comments echoed those made in Baroness Casey’s review, which had a whole section on MO19 and the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection (PaDP) Command, where Couzens worked.

The review, which found the Met to be institutionally racist, homophobic and misogynist, said MO19 was dominated by cliques “well-connected to senior officers in the Met” and described the PaDP as a “dark corner” of the force, “where poor behaviours can easily flourish”.

On MO19, Casey added that there is a “widely held view that firearms officers ‘need to be allowed’ to bend or break the rules”.

Her report called for the PaDP to be effectively disbanded and demanded improved vetting in both units. She told the Met to re-evaluate all current officers using the new, higher standard.

The Met said last month it had begun reforming armed policing following Casey's report and had made changes to leadership teams and increased female representation on the PaDP to 11% of the team. The number of complaints has dropped from a high of 467 in 2020 to 171 in 2023, though the data does not include the last two months of last year.

openDemocracy has also reported on allegations of racial bias and adultification after a 13-year-old boy playing with a water pistol was rammed off his bike, held at gunpoint and arrested by an MO19 officer in Hackney, east London last year.

The case is currently under investigation by the Directorate of Professional Standards – the force’s own department for dealing with complaints against officers.

Kat Hobbs, spokesperson for the police monitoring group Netpol, told openDemocracy that the police complaints process is “not fit for purpose” and is “staffed by ex-officers”.

“It all too often finds that racism, misogyny and violence are ‘acceptable’ standards of behaviour for police officers,” she added.

Pointing to the armed officer who shot Duggan dead and was cleared of all wrongdoing in 2015, she asked: “In which other job could you shoot someone, and get away with it? It's clear from their behaviour that firearms officers expect to be able to act with impunity.”

Kelsey Mohamed of Cradle Community, a campaign group calling for prison abolition, said openDemocracy’s figures showed that: “London’s biggest, most violent gang continues to protect its members.”

She said the murders of Kaba and Duggan are evidence that “police do not keep us safe. Accountability doesn’t exist with an institution whose purpose is to maintain the racist, sexist status quo”.

Mohamed added that investing in living conditions, education and healthcare including mental health was far more important for de-escalating violence than investing in firearms policing.

A public inquiry into Everard’s murder published its first report last week, calling for a radical overhaul of the police vetting system after finding the Met “repeatedly failed” to spot warning signs about Couzens.

It found that Couzens “should never have been an officer” and that investigations into allegations he had indecently exposed himself in 2015, 2020 and 2021 had been marred by police failures.