Met Police officer convicted of 13 rapes and 1 kidnap

[afternoonoflife]

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/met-police-officer-found-guilty-145602422.html

He was able to join the police despite being accused of the rape of a child in 2017.

Are there no checks before letting people enroll? You'd think that even a basic check would focus on picking up something as bad as that. Horrific!

Sad that I'm not surprised in the slightest. I wonder how many more there are.

Chilling.

Does make you wonder just how many more are out there policing?

Doesn't give me much confidence to call the police if I was ever unfortunate enough to be a victim of a sexual assault or rape.

This.

My response to the thread title was a resigned ‘oh right…another one’.

Still, the fact that there have been so many cases like this lately is giving me some hope that there are a lot of investigations going on as they attempt to root out all the wrong’uns. Or am I naïve?

Extremely disturbing. How do these predators get into the police force? It really beggars belief.

In the prison service vetting takes months, why not in the police too?!

It took DH 2.5yrs from application to appointment. The process included vetting of him and his entire family, drugs tests, assessment day, interviews. It might have changed now, but when he applied, it was pretty gruelling.

Positions of power and responsibility attract two types of people in the main: those who want to make the world a better place; those who want power over others.

I am married to a copper and so obviously know at least one good one, but even he says there's no way on earth he'd recommend our teenage DD approach a male officer for help should she need it.

We are in a ridiculous situation with policing in this country. Decent officers are burnt out and terrified and corrupt officers are getting away with it. What a fucking mess.

Thank goodness his victim escaped and was able to give an account. She should never have been in that situation.

This is not a police problem. It's a man problem.

The police should check that the men they employ aren't the worst men though.

@Sdpbody I see your point but I think it's both. It's true men who aren't police rape plenty, and female police officers don't rape.

However there is proof there's a toxic culture in the Met (the Whatsapp groups, sharing pictures of rape victims, not sacking or suspending officers with assault convictions etc). I grew up in a country where the police has a bad reputation and there's no way I would have gotten in the car with Wayne cousens.

Not surprising. I was talking to my dad about this earlier (retired police inspector, been in force since his 20s). You'd be sick with the amount of men in the police that are preying on specifically vulnerable women. WhatsApp groups, the lot. Unfortunately there's a lot of higher up men doing it as well so a lot is brushed under the carpet. Terrifying. Never even been approached by police before, let alone arrested etc but I'd be absolutely terrified of them knowing the shit they do

This is just absolute madness. I really do want to understand how such a failure happened. But it shows you there are certain types of people who decide to take up themselves to join the police.

Is there anything you can do that makes you a poor candidate?

It’s a safeguarding principle that predators are drawn to jobs and situations that give them access to vulnerable people. 101.

I was just reading about this. Awful. The rapes (of a child) before he joined the police obviously weren't investigated properly when they were first reported.

It is both. Our daughters, friends, mothers are not safe with the very organisation paid to protect them. The organisation that we as women are meant to contact for help when we are at our most vulnerable.

it is a very serious police problem. They apparently have zero vetting checks. And yet they can detect, at very great distance, a woman typing that TW are men.

Puzzling. the plod are, frankly, not to be trusted.

I agree. Police officers are drawn from our communities and in this respect, are representative of them.

@Brefugee not all Police like or support some of the party lines you know!

maybe they should just recruit women for the next year or so, to redress the balance, and have fewer of these outrages.

@alexdgr8 I'm not sure if you're being facetious or not but what woman in her right mind would want to join that toxic environment, and it's not the job of women to fix this mess, the men have to address their own issues. Also, even if the police force was only 1% men, any rapist within that percentage would be unacceptable.

I also think misogynistic men are drawn to roles like the police where they can flex some power, hideous.

Yes and no. Absolutely it’s a man problem, but it’s also specifically a police problem. The average man doesn’t have the same power or opportunity as a police officer.

I’d like to see what the data looks like in terms of number of police officers charged with a crime/a crime against women compared to men at large.

If the accusation went nowhere, it would probably not come up on the pre employment checks - that’s not just for police officers, that’s anyone needing clearance. DBS checks will only pick up offences charged for, so a DBS just means if they are up to stuff, they haven’t been caught yet.