By James Simons-
Hundreds of U.K police officers have been accused of using their position to sexually exploit people, including victims of crime, according to a watch dog report.
The investigation was ordered by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary earlier this year. It reveals sexual exploitation by Police officers of varying standing in the force so worrying, that the National Police Chief’s Council has described the problem as a disease, requiring more to be done to ”root it out and inoculate policing for the future”.
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Chief Constable Stephen Watson, the NPCC‘s lead for counter-corruption, said: “It is the most serious form of corruption and it can never be justified or condoned.”
The investigation found that 306 officers, 20 PCSOs and eight police staff were involved in 436 reported allegations, 40% of the accusations involving victims of domestic abuse.
The shocking data also showed all but one constabulary had received at least one allegation.
And guilty police officers had no boundaries, exploiting suspects and people with drug or alcohol problems too. The shocking report calls for urgent action in the U.K police force to clean up their act. It follows a number of sexual offences in the last few years in which high ranking police officers have been jailed for sexual offences.
Police Officers Jailed For Police Misconduct
In 2011, Northumbria Police constable Stephen Mitchell was jailed for life with a minimum of seven and a half years in 2011 for raping and sexually assaulting vulnerable women he met while on duty in Newcastle.
In October, West Midlands Police Constable Steven Walters was jailed for four years for assaulting a female passeneger in his patrol car and groping another woman in her home.
Metropolitan Police constable James Evans was jailed for four years in August after having sex with a 15 year old rape victim he met on the dating app Tinder. Evans should have eben arresting tohers for under age sex and seeing them jailed, not commiting under age sex himself.
Other findings in the report include the worrying statistics that fewer than 48% of the 436 reported allegations have been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. This clearly underlines a culture of cover up in many police forces.
There was also an apparent disconnect between the numbers of alleged cases and any subsequent staff dismissals.Police authorities generally protect the interest of their staff and tend not to dismiss them even when they have committed clear offences.
This fact is exacerbated by the fact that some counter corruption units did not have the ability or capacity to seek information about potential cases
Officers did not have a ” sufficiently clear understanding” of boundaries arund establishing or pursuing relaionships with vulnerable people.
Almost half of the forces inspected were unable t audit or monitor the use of all IT systems which limited the ability to spot staff accessing databases to identify vulnerable victims.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd described the report as “shocking”, adding that “it undermines justice and public confidence and there is no place in the police for anyone guilty of this sort of abuse,” she said.
In the wake of the report, IPCC chairwoman Dame Anne Owers has written to chief constables in England and Wales urging them to ensure that all cases involving abuse of authority for sexual gain are referred to the commission