I feel sick with anger.
Meanwhile, one woman every week is coming forward to report domestic abuse by a police officer. At least 15 women – the majority of them domestic violence victims – have been killed by police officers in the past 12 years, while the conviction rates for police officers who abuse their partners are almost half the national average. In April it was revealed that the Met was investigating an officer for raping two of his colleagues an astonishing three years after the allegations were reported. He had not even been suspended.
In 2012, the Independent Police Complaints Commission published a report called “The abuse of police powers to perpetrate sexual violence”. The report was commissioned following the jailing in 2011 of Stephen Mitchell, a former Northumbria police constable who was convicted of numerous “serious sex attacks against women he met through his job”. The recommendations? Better vetting, more vigilance and supervision. They also highlighted several instances where predatory police officers could have been stopped had their colleagues chosen to report them rather than turning a blind eye.