Sir Mark Rowley
(Picture: PA)More rapists and other sex attackers will be put behind bars, the Met Commissioner has vowed as he announced plans to use counter-terror type tactics in a major new crackdown.
Sir Mark Rowley said that data and technology would be deployed to “look at those who prey on women and children” and identify the men posing the biggest danger.
He said the aim of the approach — mirroring the way that extremists are targeted — would be to stop predators before their offending escalates.
The commissioner added that officers would also be told to take an increasingly “predator-centric” approach when investigating sex crimes to ensure that they focused more on finding the holes in suspects’ accounts than on questioning the testimony of victims.
Sir Mark said the changes would help to secure convictions and make women safer and were needed because of the “massive” scale of the problem of male violence against women and girls in London.
He added that there were “tens of thousands” of men in the capital involved in “predatory” offences, ranging from rape and domestic abuse to harassment and indecent exposure, and that the problem was being fuelled by graphic material online that either trivialises or tries to legitimise rape.
Sir Mark’s comments to the Evening Standard were the first time he has spoken publicly about the challenge of tackling violence against women since he took over at the head of Scotland Yard last month.
They follow the wave of public concern triggered by the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Met officer Wayne Couzens and the outpouring of complaints in the weeks and months following about both the scale of misogynistic offending and the Met’s failure to do more to combat it.
Sir Mark insisted that a new, more data-driven approach focusing on prioritising the most dangerous offenders, would bring results.
“I want to look at how we capture the whole scale of the problem because as you start to look across rape and sexual assault and harassment and indecent exposure type offences and online sexual abuse, the scale of the issue is massive,” he added. “So how do we take the tens of thousands of offenders in that space in London and do better at prioritising our control and targeting of those who are most dangerous?
“What’s the data and technology and science that will help officers do a better job? How do you more systematically identify the most dangerous out of tens of thousands of offenders?
“I’m talking about some different ideas about how we use data and technology to look at those who prey on women and children. The same counter-terrorism based, threat, predator-type approach to identify risk amongst offenders.”
On securing convictions in rape cases — where the proportion of reported offences leading to a prosecution has slumped to below two per cent nationwide — Sir Mark said the Met had been increasing its detection rates in recent months but needed to improve further.
Urging women in London to report offences, the commissioner told them: “Come forward, keep coming forward and helping us improve. The more information we’ve got the better we do.”
