The stories of police-perpetrated abuse of women that have emerged since the murder of Sarah Everard have been relentless and shocking – they show without doubt that there is something very rotten going on within the Metropolitan police force. In the wake of the case of David Carrick – a police officer who this week pleaded guilty to an astonishing 49 offences, including 24 rapes – public figures are queueing up to call out the Met’s culture. But where were they when these crimes – many of which could have been prevented – were being committed?
In 2021 Priti Patel, then home secretary, announced that there would be an inquiry into Everard’s murder at the hands of a serving Met officer. In response to Carrick’s conviction, she stood up in parliament and called for that inquiry to be put on a statutory footing, so that it could examine the wider issues of violence against women within the Met police. This seemed a little odd, given that she resisted the call we made at the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) in October 2021 to do precisely that, based on a number of other reports of serious offenders within the Met police – including Carrick himself, who had just been charged with rape.
The early reports of rape and domestic abuse by Carrick, where no further action was taken, illustrate the woeful inadequacies of policing of serial sexual offending by the Met, and the lack of safeguards to prevent police officers from using their powers to abuse women. It is notable that his career in the Met started in the early 2000s, when serial rapists John Worboys and Kirk Reid were offending with impunity while the police failed to investigate repeated reports against them.
We now know that several women reported Carrick for extremely serious crimes, but no further action was taken against him. In fact he was repeatedly reported to the Met, but no red flags were raised, there was no attempt to investigate a pattern of offending and there was no suspension from duty. Instead he sailed through vetting and was even licensed to use firearms. That Carrick could have not only become a police officer, but remained a serving officer for so long while he perpetrated these horrific crimes against women is terrifying.
The failure to suspend Carrick from duty or investigate him for misconduct despite multiple reports made by women matches a pattern we identified back in March 2020 in a police super-complaint on police-perpetrated domestic abuse. At that time we were looking at a sample of 19 cases from police forces across the country. Since then, we have been contacted by nearly 200 women who were victims of domestic abuse or sexual offences by police officers. In most cases those women have told us of their fears of reporting the officer, the often inadequate investigations, their victimisation by the abuser’s colleagues and the revenge exacted on them though criminalisation or through the family courts, with those they accuse misusing their police powers. In at least one case it drove a women to take her own life.
We now know that these police rapists were not rogue officers. The revelations of misogyny and serious criminality against women by police officers have become frighteningly commonplace. We have known for some time that there has been a culture of impunity for such offending by police officers, with recent reports showing a woefully deficient vetting and misconduct system, and a largely unchallenged culture of misogyny in some sections of the Met.
Some have argued that these cases show we should defund the police, but such a proposal could only ever lead to an escalation of crimes against women. What we require is radical reform, and meaningful accountability for those responsible for making these changes.
CWJ has made a series of recommendations to tackle the problem of an alleged suspect being investigated by his colleagues. In particular there needs to be an independent reporting and investigation system so that victims of police perpetrators can come forward with greater confidence, and there needs to be effective protection for whistleblowers within the police, who too often experience victimisation when they report colleagues. Colleagues and particularly managers who joined in with or turned a blind eye to misogynistic “banter”, or assist with acts of victimisation, should also be held accountable and there must be zero tolerance of sexism and misogyny within policing. External experts need to be brought in to ensure recruitment, vetting, investigation and misconduct are free from bias.
The recent end-to-end review of rape has led to the establishment of Operation Soteria Bluestone, which aims to improve the investigation and prosecution of rape, which has been at an all-time low. One of its primary purposes is to ensure that the focus of such investigations is on the suspect, not the victim. Suspect-focused investigations should be a no-brainer – as should ensuring that historical reports of previous, similar offences are central to any such investigation.
The fact that such investigations have been the exception rather than the rule provides a partial explanation for Carrick’s enduring offending. Once the focus is firmly on suspects, not victims, then we can begin changing the culture of policing violence against women in this country.
Harriet Wistrich is a solicitor and the director of the Centre for Women’s Justice
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