A Met Police whistleblower says she was left feeling suicidal after being forced to work alongside a male colleague she had reported for misconduct. 

Issy Vine, 30, from Wimbledon, south west London, got a job as a call handler at the start of the pandemic in 2020 because she felt an urge to help those in crisis and thought it would be a good start to her policing career.   

Although she described the training as ‘intense’, nothing could have prepared her for meeting her colleague, Dan*, three years down the line in April 2023.

On their first shift together, Issy alleges that Dan suggested an immigrant who had called the police for help should: ‘F*** off back to their own country’, and that he said a rape victim sounded like a ‘slut’. 

Then, after making an uncomfortable comment to Issy about Sarah Everard, who was abducted, raped and murdered by Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens in March 2021, he followed her part of the way home, despite ‘living in the opposite direction’. 

Issy decided to report Dan’s behaviour to superiors, which resulted in him being sacked for gross misconduct in November 2023.

Dan then appealed the decision and was reinstated, with Met bosses claiming the panel had been too ’emotional’ after Baroness Casey’s labelled the force ‘institutionally racist and misogynistic’. He received all the salary he’d lost and all his annual leave back. 

The alleged ordeal of having to continue working alongside Dan left her considering taking her own life and ‘crying her eyes out’ every time she entered the office. 

Now, Issy is suing the Met Police for whistleblowing detriment, harassment based on sex, failure to make reasonable adjustments and constructive dismissal. The final hearing for the case has been set for 2027.

Issy Vine, 30, from Wimbledon , south west London , got a job as a call handler at the start of the pandemic in 2020 but her world was turned upside down three years later when she first met Dan*

She told the Daily Mail: ‘It was terrible, I was going to work with red raw eyes, crying my eyes out the whole time. People were just looking at me pathetically and couldn’t really understand what was going on, and why I was this emotional wreck and why I couldn’t do my job properly.’

‘It wasn’t my fault, I just did what I was told to do, which was to report wrongdoing, and because of how the Met treated me, they had put me in this place where I felt like a fraud.’

Issy said that she felt ‘triggered’ even looking at her London-based office or police uniform as she felt it was a ‘farce’.

‘I thought maybe I should just jump off a building because they don’t care about my mental health,’ she added.  

‘They just stripped everything away from me. When I joined the police, I was this confident, bubbly [person], I felt really secure in myself and I left I was a shell of who I was, and I left with two health conditions that I didn’t have before. 

‘I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s autoimmune disease, which had started the month I’d found out he was returning to work.’

Issy also said she was diagnosed with PTSD and felt as though she was missing out on promotions at work for taking days off sick.

Issy found herself sitting next to Dan by chance two years ago, with the pair occasionally engaging in small talk between answering calls.

‘He was a bit weird,’ she said, adding that he would interrupt conversations with other colleagues. 

Issy Vine is pictured presenting a petition to 10 Downing Street to review the misconduct policies 

‘If we had a sexual call and we were discussing what had happened and what to do, he would always butt in. 

Breaking point came when Dan nudged Issy to look at the report of a rape victim, calling her ‘a slut’. 

‘That was the first comment and I was really taken aback and shocked. I didn’t really know what to say.’

Soon after, Dan picked up the phone to someone who had just arrived in the country, nudging Issy and asking if he could be ‘unkind’.

She said: ‘He got his iPhone out and got his notes app up and wrote ‘Why don’t you just f*** off back to your own country’. 

‘I was really taken aback and got a bit more courage and told him ‘That’s really harsh, we can’t be horrible to people for coming to us when they don’t know what to do’. He then said ‘Ok, maybe I’m being harsh.’ It was really awkward.’

As their shift continued, Issy found herself on a live 999 call with a map of south London up on her screen, including the area of Clapham.

She said: ‘I felt his breath in my ear, and he went, “That’s Sarah Everard’s turf.” 

‘I was just absolutely creeped out, uncomfortable, we’d never spoken about Sarah Edward, we’d never spoken about misconduct, we’d never spoken about bad police officers, and my call wasn’t anything to do with rape, like, it was just really gross and really uncomfortable, especially as I was on the phone on a live 999 call.’

Issy described herself as a ‘confident, bubbly person’ before joining the Met Police but she was left a ‘shell of who I was’ 

Issy claimed that because they were on the same shift pattern, she waited 15 minutes after finishing work at 11pm to avoid seeing him while leaving the building. 

She lived in the opposite direction to Dan, but to her shock, saw him as she went to get on the bus home.     

‘My bus was coming, and he shouted over, “When’s your bus coming?” And I said, “Oh, it’s just here” and I jumped on the bus and the doors closed.  

‘But then, as the bus pulled off, there was banging and someone was shouting, “Hold the bus”.  The doors opened and he got on and came and sat next to me.’

He then told her ‘I’m coming your way tonight’.

Issy said: ‘I was thinking the worst, but also trying to tell myself not to be silly. I got really anxious because I wasn’t in the safety of an office, where I knew where to hide if this happened.

‘It was dark and it was dead and I was just really uncomfortable. I felt like he was testing me to see how far I’d go, to see how far I’d let him come with me.’

He then allegedly boarded a tube with Issy, before she got off at the first stop and got on the service behind. 

Issy said the Met would not investigate the incident, claiming the force had told her that it would ‘have to happen a number of times’ for the behaviour to be explored. 

After reporting Dan, Issy was told to take six days off while the force took a look at the situation – however, when she returned, ‘no-one knew she had complained’. 

‘They’d asked me to go and work in a specific department and he was there,’ she said. ‘I burst out crying, I was like, ‘How can you make me work with him? I’ve made a complaint’, and they were like, ‘Oh sorry, we forgot to tell anyone.”

Meanwhile, she said Dan was offered a welfare officer because he was ‘worried about his job’ but claimed she was not provided with any support. 

Her mental health then spiralled and she went off work for a further month, with the investigation leading to him being dismissed for gross misconduct at Scotland Yard in November 2023.

She was then told he would have the right to appeal the decision, but was assured by the force that she would be notified if he chose to do so.

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‘I sort of put it to bed and I was really proud of the Met and really grateful that they believed me, and that everything I provided to them, they took into consideration,’ she said.

She also alleged that Dan ‘made up rumours’ about her and told people that she was a serial complainer, which she then had to disprove.

The director of the department at the Met then chose to rehire Dan as he thought it was ‘too harsh to dismiss him’.

‘He felt the Casey report made the original panel be too harsh than what they should have been and that it had too much influence,’ she said.

‘Furious’ at the result, Issy then filed a complaint against the director who had reinstated him in July 2024. 

‘No one really knew how to deal with it,’ she said, adding that staff were unsure about how to make a complaint about their boss due to the hierarchical positions.

After being ‘ping-ponged’ between the grievance and the professional standards committee ‘for months,’ Issy was then told that it had been escalated to the deputy assistant commissioner. 

However, she was told five months later by the commissioner’s personal assistant that they knew nothing about her situation.

‘They buried my report,’ she said. From that point onwards, Issy’s mental state of mind plummeted, leading to her almost getting into a car accident while driving to work. 

‘I was driving on the way to work for a shift and this was roughly when I found out that professional standards had not actually progressed my complaint,’ she said. 

‘I was so depressed and so upset, I was crying my eyes out driving to work and it was pitch black and I was about to do a night shift and I was so upset. I couldn’t see out of my eyes because of all my tears and I just swerved because I wasn’t paying attention to the road and I nearly crashed into another car.

Issy reported her colleague for allegedly making an inappropriate comment about Sarah Everard, calling a rape victim a ‘slut’ and wishing an immigrant would ‘F*** off back to your own country’

‘I kept going because but I had a brief second of just wanting to crash but after that split second, I sort of was able to regain control. But then as I finished my journey, I just had these thoughts in my head, like maybe I should’ve gone through with it.

‘I had no control over my thoughts, but also I had no control over the situation, because I was so dependent on how the Met were responding to everything. I didn’t get myself in that place; they put me there.’ 

She was later told by a psychiatrist that she should not be answering ‘high risk’ calls at work because she was suicidal. 

‘It was becoming too risky putting me, a suicidal person, in charge of live incidents,’ she added, saying that she did not want to accidentally ‘kill an officer or a person by mistake’. 

She claimed that while the Met initially agreed to take her off these calls, she was soon put back on them due to ‘staff shortages’.

This was the final straw for Issy, who said: ‘It was becoming so dangerous, putting me on the dispatching channel, looking after officer safety and public safety that I just had to leave because they were prioritising business needs over my life, the officers’ lives and the public’s lives. So I left.’

Issy says she no longer feels suicidal and has instead turned to social media to share her side of the story after feeling ignored by the Met. 

‘I’d spent a year and ten months going through the right channels internally at the Met then when the Met didn’t do anything properly, then I went to the government, my MP and the mayor and the ministers, and they didn’t reply,’ she said. ‘So I just felt like I genuinely have no choice.’ 

‘I’ve only got waves and waves of support. I think out of 5,000 comments, I’d have 2 negative ones but it’s overwhelming support.’ 

Now, Issy pours her time into her organisation called Speak Up Now UK, an online platform that provides wellbeing support for whistleblowers and allows them to write anonymous testimonies about their experiences.

She is currently not earning any money, but is hoping to start paying herself a small wage once she secures funding. The final hearing for the case has been set for 2027.

The Metropolitan Police told the Daily Mail: ‘These comments were entirely unacceptable, which is why this matter was brought to a misconduct hearing.

‘We take Ms Vine’s concerns about the outcome of the misconduct process extremely seriously.

‘We remain open to a conversation with Ms Vine in order to directly address her concerns.

‘Staff members deserve to feel safe and supported at work, and the Met continues to encourage everyone who works for us to report allegations of criminal and conduct behaviour.’

 * Names have been changed 

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