By James Simons-
The Metropolitan Police has apologised to the victims of sacked PC David Carrick, as they wait to hear how one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders will be punished at a two-day sentencing hearing.
Assistant Commissioner Barbara Gray has said she is “truly sorry” after the force let down the victims of Carrick, adding that “he should not have been a police officer.”
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Gray, said in a statement on Sunday that she was ‘truly sorry for the harm and devastation’ Carrick caused.
She admitted that the police force had let the victims down and said the force was committed to ‘root out those who corrupt our integrity’, and apologised to his victims , adding that he should never have been a police officer.
”’I am truly sorry for the harm and devastation he has caused them. We let them down and we failed to identify a man in the ranks of the Metropolitan Police Service who carried out the most awful offences.
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‘He should not have been a police officer.’
The Met said it has invested millions in the Directorate of Professional Standards as well as setting up a dedicated Domestic Abuse and Sexual Offending Investigation Team.
Last month, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said that two or three police officers are expected to appear in court each week to face criminal charges in the coming months as the scandal-hit force attempts to reform.
He told the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on Wednesday that more ‘painful stories’ will emerge as moves progress to remove hundreds of corrupt officers who are thought to be serving.
After Carrick’s guilty plea nearly three weeks ago, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said more disturbing cases involving police officers could be uncovered in the short term.
A new Met Police integrity hotline has received ‘tens of calls’ a week, leading to new investigations, Sir Mark said, a third of which relate to other forces.
In the wake of Carrick’s conviction, around 1,000 previous cases involving Met officers and staff who were accused of sexual offences or domestic violence are being reviewed to make sure they were handled correctly.
The statement comes after a number of revelations about the failure police forces including the Met to identify Carrick as a serial rapist.
Police were alerted to his behaviour eight times between 2000 and 2021, most of which while he was serving on the force before he was finally caught.
He carried out 85 sex attacks on women who he locked in cupboards, urinated on and forced to clean his house naked, making him one of the UK’s worst rapists.
Women said Carrick locked them in a tiny cupboard under the stairs of his Hertfordshire home for 10 hours, controlled what they ate, and cut them off from their family.
Carrick had been a police officer for two years in 2003 when he began his 17-year campaign of serious sexual assault.
Scotland Yard had not taken action against the junior officer in 2002 when an ex-girlfriend reporters him for actual bodily harm.
He was eventually reported to Hertfordshire Constabulary in 2019 following a row with a girlfriend, during which he dragged her out of his house by the neck.
Carrick, 48, served as a Met officer for 20 years and was sacked from the force for gross misconduct after admitting 49 criminal charges – including 24 counts of rape over an 18-year period.
His sentencing hearing begins on Monday at London’s Southwark Crown Court.
Apologising to Carrick’s victims, Assistant Commissioner Gray said the Met has “let them down”.
She said the force had “failed to identify a man in the ranks of the Metropolitan Police Service who carried out the most awful offences”.
She added Carrick “should not have been a police officer”.
She also warned: “More detail will be provided about the cruel and abusive nature of his crimes and about the impact they have had on the tremendously brave women who came forward to provide evidence against him.”
Carrick has admitted to “the most appalling offences against women” and his sentencing needs to be about his victims as “they truly deserve to have their voices heard and see justice done”, the assistant commissioner said.
She added that the Met is “determined to root out those who corrupt our integrity”.
It wasn’t until October 2021 that Carrick was arrested on suspicion of rape.
He was placed on restricted duties but shockingly was not suspended.
When the victim withdrew the complaint, the Met decided that he had no case to answer.
Carrick was then arrested again in the same month and suspended from police duty.
Reports today indicate that no officers from Scotland Yard will be referred to the independent policing watchdog as a result of the failures.
Last year the Independent Office for Police Conduct asked all forces involved in the case to identify any potential failures.
The Met have blamed processes and approaches ‘in place at the time’ rather than the blunders of individual officers.
The serial rapist David Carrick told one victim he was a police officer and the “safest person” she could be with, before luring her back to his home and raping her at gunpoint, a sentencing hearing has been told.
The hearing at Southwark crown court comes after Carrick last month admitted 49 charges detailing 85 serious offences including rape, sexual assault, false imprisonment and coercive or controlling behaviour.
The court heard Carrick carried out a series of “violent and brutal attacks” while a serving police officer using “his power and control” to silence his victims.
Prosecutor Tom Little QC told the court that while serving as a Metropolitan police officer Carrick engaged in “a systematic catalogue of violent and brutal sexual offending”, over a “period of 17 years increasing in frequency … and with an increasing level of humiliation being inflicted.”
Carrick, 48, was a Met officer from 2001 until the day after he admitted his guilt last month.
In all he attacked 12 women from 2003 to 2020. Some of the offences took place in London but most were in Hertfordshire, with Carrick living in Stevenage.
Little told Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb – who will decide Carrick’s prison sentence – that some of the victims were older, some younger, but all were vulnerable in different ways.
He said: “[Carrick] frequently relied on his charm to beguile and mislead the victims in the first place and would use his power and control – which the prosecution say is linked in part because of what he did for a living – to stop them leaving or consider reporting him.”
After joining the Met, by 2009 Carrick was assessed as suitable to have a gun and joined the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command.
Little said: “It was a catalogue of violent and sexual offences perpetrated on multiple victims, whether he was in a controlling or coercive relationship with them or not or even if it was just a single occasion.”
The prosecutor added: “The reality was, if he had the opportunity, he would rape them, sexually abuse or assault them and/or humiliate them.”
The first victim whose case Carrick pleaded guilty to followed an attack in 2003. For the first time into the official record, Little read the details of her ordeal.
The woman was 20 and was on an evening out with friends in a London bar when she met Carrick. He claimed he lived nearby and was having a housewarming party and invited her back.
Little said: “The defendant told [the woman] that he was the safest person that she could be with and that he was a police officer.”
Back at the one-bedroom flat the woman tried to leave after a while, but Carrick would not let her.
Little said: “He grabbed her by the hair and put his hand round her mouth and dragged her backwards. He threw her on the bed. He held her down.
“He grabbed her arms. He had taken his shirt off. She bit his arm and he put his hand behind the bed. He searched for something and then put a black handgun to her head and said to her: ‘You are not going.’ She froze. The prosecution does not contend that it was a real firearm. [The woman] could not say whether it was or not.”
Little said the rape was prolonged and included explicit threats: “It carried on for some time. He put his hands around her throat and said he was going to be the last thing she saw.”
Carrick further sexually assaulted her, and then “he talked to her about her parents as if nothing has happened”.
The attack by Carrick then resumed. Later the then Met officer said to his victim: “…. If I let you go, you will not come back so this is the only way.”
Little said Carrick then claimed to have been watching the woman for some time, and when she asked him about the gun replied that “he liked guns and that he could not have her screaming the place down”.
Once the woman left Carrick’s flat she went to hospital where she was found to have suffered extensive injuries, including bite marks, bruising and internal bleeding. She had bruising on her ankles from being dragged.
She did not report the attack to police at the time, with a nurse telling her as she was young she may be better to forget about it and move on.
The hearing continues and is expected to hear further harrowing details of his attacks.
The head of the Met’s ‘AC-12’, Paul Betts, went on to land a top job despite failing to identify Carrick as a serial rapist.
Last month, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said that two or three police officers are expected to appear in court each week to face criminal charges in the coming months as the scandal-hit force attempts to reform.
He told the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee that more “painful stories” will emerge as moves progress to remove hundreds of corrupt officers who are thought to be serving.
A new Met Police integrity hotline has received “tens of calls” a week, leading to new investigations, Sir Mark said, a third of which relate to other forces.
In the wake of Carrick’s conviction, around 1,000 previous cases involving Met officers and staff who were accused of sexual offences or domestic violence are being reviewed to make sure they were handled correctly.
This is expected to be completed by the end of March.
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