Cliff Mitchell is a serial rapist. He was caught and charged with multiple offences only after attacking a woman at knifepoint last year, blindfolding and tying her up, and forcing her into his car. Thankfully, his terrified victim managed to escape and get help from a passerby, who called the police. What makes this case so frightening, however, is that at the time Cliff Mitchell was the police. He was a serving officer with the Met who had somehow managed to pass the vetting process despite, in 2019, being accused of (though never charged with) another rape.
What is most staggering of all, however, is that Mitchell started his police training in August 2021, five months after Sarah Everard was murdered by a serving Met officer named Wayne Couzens. Even as senior officers were vowing to ensure such a thing never happened again, Mitchell was getting his warrant card. Remember that, when you hear the same promises being made all over again, this week in response to Dame Elish Angiolini’s devastating preliminary findings on all the missed chances to save Sarah’s life. Remember that, when you are told that her murder was a one-off.
The Angiolini report crisply spells out what has been obvious almost from the day Couzens was arrested: that he should never have been allowed anywhere near the police, and that Sarah might be alive today if not for a shocking failure shared across three forces to follow up on allegations of indecent exposure and other worrying behaviour against what would turn out to be one of their own.
I read it half-expecting damning proof of collusion – officers closing ranks – or rank misogyny. But instead what emerges is something almost more disturbing: stories of apathy and sloppiness, of “lethargic and inadequate” investigations by officers seemingly looking (as Angiolini put it) for reasons not to pursue seemingly low-level cases.
When, in 2015, a couple reported a man driving round Dover exposing himself, in a car that turned out to be registered to Couzens, then serving with the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, Kent police closed the case without even speaking to him. (It’s unclear whether they even realised he was a serving officer.) A frightened female cyclist who reported being accosted in a remote lane by a man, now identified as Couzens, masturbating in front of her found the police response upsettingly casual: potential leads were not followed up, and that file too was closed. Three years later, he was cleared to join the Met despite the police national computer flagging up the initial, 2015 allegation.
The inquiry’s recommendation that indecent exposure in general be taken much more seriously by police will be welcomed by women sick of being told to shrug off what is a creepy and distressing crime with chilling implications. One in five women and girls have been victims – I was at primary school when it happened to me – yet only 6% of reported offences end in prosecution and many women don’t even report it to the police, assuming it won’t be taken seriously.
Last week, MPs on the home affairs select committee heard a moving call from Lisa Squire, whose student daughter Libby was murdered in Hull five years ago by a man with a history of exposing himself and spying on women through their windows, for such offences to be treated as a potential gateway to more serious sexual offending. Though more research is needed, the risk that men who get their kicks from frightening and humiliating women like this will be emboldened to go further if they can get away with it is obvious.
Equally welcome is Angiolini’s call for a thorough overhaul of vetting. Couzens had a history of bad debt, which should have been enough to bar him from the force, she found. Yet despite being initially rejected by Kent police, he still found his way in as a volunteer special constable. Most damningly, she discovered that before joining the police he had allegedly committed a serious sexual assault on a child barely in her teens, though that attack wasn’t reported to the police.
We can’t know what might have happened if it had been, but an emergency review in 2022 of police vetting commissioned after Sarah’s death by the then home secretary, Priti Patel, identified one case of man who had been cleared to become a special constable despite a juvenile conviction for repeated indecent exposure, and another allowed to join despite being previously accused (though not convicted) of sexual assault in a nightclub. Though the trivialising of sexual offences against women may well play a part in otherwise baffling decisions like this, so perhaps does pressure to plug gaps in an overstretched national service that was slashed during the austerity years and then asked to recruit 20,000 people in a hurry. In some cases, the 2022 report concluded, bad vetting decisions “may be influenced by the need to meet certain recruitment targets”.
The lengthy task of clearing up this horrific mess will inevitably outlive this exhausted government. The frustration of the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, was almost palpable in parliament on Thursday, as she accused James Cleverly of doing too little too late to prevent further tragedies. Labour wants a mandatory code of vetting that would pursue any allegation of – not just conviction for – sexual or domestic violence against officers.
Yet to read Angiolini’s report is to wonder whether policing in its current form is even capable of delivering such a vigorous response. And if not, as she chillingly concludes, there is absolutely nothing to stop it happening again.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
