That the police don't vet their officers

[OneTC]

And if not, why not?

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-64289461

My friend was vetted

the problem is the police get so many accusations ( no doubt some true some false) there is no shock and impact

I have a (female) friend that is about to join the Met Police. I will be interested to see how she gets on, as she is not one to take any shit! It has taken months and months for her to pass the vetting process and she already has an enhanced DBS (or whatever they call it now) as she works with children and the vulnerable currently.

I read it that his offences occurred in a domestic setting, so understandable (but not forgiveable) to some extent how he got away with it for a long time. Unfortunately he'll have manipulated and gaslighted these women in to thinking he was above the law.

HOWEVER, while one report can be dismissed as a vindictive revenge seeker, but NINE reports?! That's beyond disgraceful for him to have been able to get away with it for so long.

Thank goodness he pleaded guilty, so as to avoid the horror of his victims having to testify in court.

Rest assured he won't be given an easy time in prison.

Whereas everything about this situation raises serious concerns, to answer

"AIBU that police don't vet their officers" which is what you have asked, then Yes, YABU.
I know of 3 people who have joined 2 different forces in the last couple of years and the vetting procedure has been long and thorough.

Well my DH is a special (not in the Met) and no one I have met is racist or sexist. But the shit they have deal with is unbelievable. Much of it is down to the failure of the NHS and social services to deal with mental illness.

I'd say the failure of successive Governments to fund Mental Health support.

This is the experience of the people I know who are in the force too. Not the Met - I don't know how different the Met is from the rest of the Country - but the OP asks about 'Police' and not just the Met.

Oh Shush...and jump right off that bandwagon!

This is not about a bad apple, or a bad policeman. This is about an institution that repeatedly ignored and failed to investigate complaints and vet one of their own appropriately. Despite several complaints and allegations he was allowed a fire arm . Despite being described by his coworkers as mean and cruel he was allowed a firearm.

Repeated failures by other officers and the police as an institution gave this man the power,the control,the protection on top of an actual weapon to rape and abuse women for years.

That is why the public don't trust the police as an institution. Because they repeatedly fuck up, they repeatedly fail to police their own and it's the public that pay the price. It's irrelevant how many good policemen you know, that's just "not my nigel" , if the good ones don't speak out and the institution itself turns a blind eye to the bad ones.

I agree that there was a failure here once behaviour was brought to their attention. However, this doesn’t mean people shouldn’t trust the police.

As a teacher had my social media read like his I would have been suspended immediately, even in the absence of any allegations.

Vetting includes social media these days

Uncomfortable truth is that some abusive personalities join the police for precisely the reason that they can have power over other people.

You want a good policeman? That's one who uses his powers lightly.

You want some guy who has fantasies and fetishes who gets to throw people about - well you will see that in the police too.

People are too quick to give them the benefit. It is not a surprise Carrick was in the Army before and family estrangement, along with complaints even before he joined the police.

There definitely is a very strict vetting procedure, my DH faced very in-depth questions about his brother who had been in jail decades ago (not for anything that serious) and his relationship with him. From DHs experience the police face a much bigger danger from the public. He was recently faced with a mentally ill very large teenager in the middle of the street at 2am trying to attack him. Surrounded by people trying to film it and egging on the guy luckily DH managed to diffuse the situation. But this is what they are faced with. Like you not sure how different the met is.

@OMG12 - Unfortunately vetting procedures are no where near as stringent as they should be and apparently urgent changes are needed:

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/police-vetting-how-it-works-and-calls-for-change/

I have a feeling that I have seen you on another thread about the police before. No one is saying the job is easy. I am sure there are individual police officers who are great but that doesn’t negate the many many issues with police forces across the country.

It's not just the Met, look at South Yorkshire, if Orgreave had been investigated properly then Hillsborough & Rotherham probably wouldn't have happened or been covered up. West Midlands were found guilty of phone tapping the witnesses & families of victims of Hillsborough. It's time there was a full investigation of all police forces in this country.

I was a special constable for a few years. Far too many regular officers I worked with shouldn't have been anywhere near the police. Many were just plain lazy (i.e. I spent many hours sat in the officer's family/friend living room watching TV or chatting, when we should have been out on patrol, or they'd deliberately ignore calls over the radio when they were "busy" having a cigarette, etc). A few were openly running side-businesses, one selling his wife's used underwear! Some were downright rude and nasty to civilians, i.e. making lewd comments to girls on Friday/Saturday nights around the pubs and clubs, or in one case, a traffic officer seeing a group of old ladies in the middle of a road trying to cross the road late at night outside a bingo hall and stopped with his blues and hazard lights on - I thought he was going to stop the traffic to let them cross, but he just gave a four letter verbal tirade out of his window about how they should use a zebra crossing, and then carried on driving leaving them there! Then there's the illegal activity such as illegally arresting people they just didn't like and then fabricating evidence/offences against them. Not to mention how some seemed "very friendly" with known local offenders such as drug dealers, known burglars, etc. New/young female officers were subject to lots of sexist "jokes", such as the men referring to breathalysers as blow-jobs - but only when young women officers were around. I last around 3 years, and couldn't take any more - I'd hoped to make it a life long voluntary "hobby", but didn't want any part of it. I complained many times over the years to my direct line management, but there was an air of apathy and I got the impression, they either didn't care or it was so widespread they knew it was pointless.

Increased use of body worn cameras has been really helpful in some police forces. Regular and routine auditing is essential when people are given this sort of power.

The thing is, the public perception of the police is that they must be good. That is not true, it is naive. Like all professionals there is a mix.

My interactions with them have been really mixed. As a professional, they were obsequious. As someone complaining, very bad.

The police are very hierarchy driven. They grade you according their own preferences. If you are a woman, there is a lot of sexism. And they do not like being challenged about anything.

The police "need" a certain % of nasty bullies. You know, to pick on women drinking coffee during "lockdown". No surprise that they do that outside of work as well as in it.

If they're really actually all being vetted along the lines of having a jailed brother being of interest to them, then how do we get from there, to Carrick having been accused of sex crimes multiple times, even prior to being a police?

I asked in the thread title if they vetted them, and I know they do, but it just doesn't seem to be very developed, frequent enough, or capable of picking up wrong uns. It's also controlled by individual police forces so there'll be people falling through the cracks all over

They aren't vetted consistently in the Met. That is the problem.

Black men perhaps? I do worry about them

Th Guardian article says 1,000 out of 45,000 officers/staff are the subject of complaints of domestic/sexual viloence.

That's more than 2%. Not 'isolated incidents'. And doesn't cover all the women/sexual partners who are too scared to/don't see the point in reporting

It’s more than 2% because how many of the 45000 are women?

Chilling stuff.

The Guardian article says 1,000 out of 45,000 officers/staff are the subject of complaints of domestic/sexual violence.

It was being reported on the news as approximately 1 in 50 officers.

I’d love these figures to be broken down into male and female.

I’d put money on all most of those 1000 officers being male.

I think it’s more like 1 in 30 male officers who will be the subject of complaints.

Good points both

I always get the impression there is no totally separate body to investigate them?

The police should be rigorously investigated, something should click into place after so many accusations to see what's going on.

Who investigates the police? Very brave people. You don't get to the situation we have without most people putting trust in them mindlessly.