Twelve police employees, including serving officers, are under investigation for misconduct over the handling of allegations against the serial rapist and former Metropolitan police officer David Carrick.
Carrick, 48, a former armed officer, pleaded guilty in January to 85 serious offences including 48 rapes between 2003 and 2020, making him one of the worst sexual offenders in modern British criminal history.
On Wednesday the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said 11 serving or former police officers and one police staff employee were under formal investigation.
The IOPC is looking at whether complaints about Carrick made to police in 2002, 2016, 2019 and 2021 were bungled. The Met has already admitted it should have done better in identifying Carrick as a danger to women and as unfit to be a police officer.
The IOPC regional director, Mel Palmer, said: “If these matters had been adequately progressed, Carrick could potentially have faced gross misconduct proceedings and been dismissed from the police service years before he was eventually arrested.”
The news from the police watchdog comes as the investigative team that built the case that convicted Carrick examine new allegations of sexual assault against the disgraced former Met officer.
The IOPC said 10 of the people whose police service they were examining were under investigation for gross misconduct, which could lead to them being sacked and permanently barred from policing, and two were being investigated for misconduct.
The police watchdog said: “This month we have informed five serving Metropolitan police service officers – a detective constable, detective sergeant, detective inspector and two chief inspectors – that they are under investigation for gross misconduct.
“A former MPS officer, now at the City of London police force, and two retired MPS officers – a former police constable and former superintendent – have also been advised they are under investigation for gross misconduct.
“A serving MPS staff member and an MPS police constable have been advised they are under investigation for misconduct.”
Also under investigation for gross misconduct are two officers from Wiltshire police, after that force received a complaint against Carrick in 2016.
The IOPC added: “Misconduct notices have been served because we identified an indication these individuals may have potentially breached the police standards of professional behaviour by failing in their duty to adequately explore, investigate, supervise or oversee investigations into allegations made against David Carrick while he was a serving police officer. This does not necessarily mean that disciplinary proceedings will follow.”
Carrick used his status as a police officer to terrify women into silence and to perpetuate his offending, gaining confidence after repeated complaints against him were dismissed.
Ongoing criminal and disciplinary investigations are delaying the official government inquiry into the scandal conducted by Dame Elish Angiolini. As well as the IOPC, fresh criminal allegations against Carrick of further serious sexual assaults are being investigated by Hertfordshire police.
In a letter to the home secretary released last week, Angiolini wrote: “Hertfordshire constabulary is now investigating further allegations against Carrick and, in July, the Independent Office for Police Conduct announced that it had launched multiple investigations into relevant conduct matters. I will therefore be prevented from interviewing all the relevant witnesses and submitting my report on the Carrick case to you until all those proceedings conclude.”
