As I write this, news has just broken of the sentence passed against David Carrick, the self-proclaimed “untouchable” who committed 85 offences, including rape, sexual assault, and false imprisonment whilst a serving Metropolitan Police officer between 2003 – 2020. His despicable crimes blighted the lives of at least twelve women and now he will, hopefully, spend the rest of his life behind bars.
But this second monster of the Met, after Wayne Couzens, is just one of hundreds of officers who have now been accused of predatory, abusive, and misogynistic behaviour. It looks like a reckoning is occurring, but we have to ask why it was at the cost of a young woman’s life? It was only Couzens’ rape and murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021 which seems to have burst the bubble of complicity which existed in the Police profession, the tolerance of an abhorrent culture of toxic masculinity and the wilful failure of the Police to police themselves. Protecting comrades has been the watchword of the Police, instead of protecting the public – at the cost of lost and ruined lives.
Only yesterday the City of London Police became the latest to announce a huge increase in the number of misconduct allegations made against their officers; a rise of 190% in the last 9 months, apparently driven by internal reports made by colleagues against their colleagues. These cases include “police perpetrated domestic abuse, sexual misconduct, misogyny and violence against women and girls.” The City of London Force attempted to ‘spin’ this statistic to its benefit by proclaiming that it demonstrated “staff awareness of the standards of professional behaviour and trust in the force to appropriately investigate such allegations”, but that latter comment is particularly telling – revealing the truth that prior to the revolution in Police accountability that we are witnessing, sparked by the outrage over Sarah Everard’s abduction and murder – most officers either thought misogynistic and abusive behaviour by male officers was ‘no big deal’ or were too frightened for their careers to report it.
When:
– the Metropolitan Police Commissioner announces that he has ordered a review of 1,071 Police officers and staff over allegations of sexual offences or domestic violence over the last 10 years “to make sure appropriate decisions were made”, and
– HM Inspectorate of Constabulary reports that “unsuitable” men being allowed to join the Police is “widespread” to such an extent that a review of hundreds of officers revealed that about 10% should never have got through the vetting process,
we can see the terrible extent of the problem: a problem that must have been in plain sight for Police officers themselves for decades, but which they chose not to see. These officers are the very people specially trained and empowered to root out the criminals amongst us.
As a result of these catastrophic failures, one of my clients was groomed and raped at the age of 13 by a Police officer who should never have been vetted as fit to serve.
Another of my clients was made pregnant by the Police officer who had arrested her only weeks before – but when she reported this matter, even after her child’s paternity was confirmed by DNA testing, the Police Force in question excused their officer on the basis that the officer claimed the sexual encounter had taken place whilst he was ‘off duty’.
This list could continue and would make grim reading.
No matter what the pious words we now hear from Police leadership, it is an inescapable truth that all Chief Constables, past and present, bear responsibility for the Police culture in which predators, misogynists and abusers were able to prosper and which allowed Police officers more lives than a cat when it came to allegations of crime and misconduct – until the dawn of that horrible day when the Police, as an institution, finally looked at themselves in the mirror.
Reform is finally coming, but what a price has been paid for it.
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