One in 10 cops should not have got through the vetting stage, a police inspector has said.
Inspector of Constabulary Matt Parr said this is a "problem that is widespread" and "historic".
It comes after Metropolitan Police officer David Carrick pleaded guilty to 49 offences between 2003 and 2020 - including 24 counts of rape on eight women, false imprisonment, controlling and coercive behaviour and sexual assault.
The Met Police had received nine complaints about the armed officer over the course of two decades but allowed him to continue working.
In November, a damning report into the recruitment of officers revealed cops were cleared to join after committing rape, sending racist messages, indecent exposure, having criminal links, witness intimidation, drink-driving, domestic abuse and related assaults.
The report was ordered after the rape, kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021 by serving police officer Wayne Couzens.
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, Mr Parr said: “When we reported back in November about vetting across the country, we looked at hundreds of officers that had joined the police…. about 10% of them should not have got through vetting.
“That was not a random sample, these are cases we had highlighted but a significant number of officers joined the police that, in our view, should not have done.
“This is a problem that is widespread, I think it has been historic. I do think at last policing has smelt the coffee, woken up, recognised the scale of the problem.”
He added that a drive to recruit 20,000 new officers should not cause a drop in vetting standards.
He said: “The general problem is public confidence in the police has definitely taken some serious knocks, and the most important thing now is to restore this confidence… I don’t accept that the new 20,000 officers can be used as an excuse for lowering the standards of the people that join.”
It comes one day after Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley made a disturbing revelation that there could be two to three criminal cases against officers going to court every week for the next few months.
Mr Parr said the suggestion two to three Metropolitan Police officers are expected to appear in court for the next few months shows the force is “doing the right thing” in rooting out misconduct.
He added: “This is things improving.
“The fact they are coming to court does show the Met are detecting them, that they are rooting them out and they are getting them through the courts and they are getting them dismissed.”
Yesterday, a Met Police Safer Schools Officer also pleaded guilty to a string of child sex offences.
PC Hussain Chehab pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual activity with a girl aged 13 to 15 before he became a police officer, but also offences linked to indecent images of children that he committed while in the force.
The offences took place between March and September 2019, before Chehab joined the Metropolitan Police the following year, where he was attached to a school in north London.
They only came to light when the girl's family reported in July 2021 that their daughter had been in a sexual relationship with Chehab, which it later emerged began when she was 14.
Chehab, 22, also admitted three counts of making indecent photographs of a child and one of engaging in sexual communication with a child, when the case was heard at Wood Green Crown Court.
The Met said some of these offences were committed while he was posted at a north London school between May and August 2021.
