A Metropolitan Police detective is facing allegations of failing to properly oversee an investigation into serial rapist David Carrick, with a tribunal hearing claims of "unconscious bias" linked to the victim’s race and sex.
Carrick, 51, a former armed officer with the force, is recognised as one of the UK’s most prolific sex offenders, currently serving 37 life sentences for attacking more than a dozen women.
The misconduct hearing in south London on Monday heard that Detective Sergeant Ray Mackennon line-managed Officer A, who was assigned to investigate Carrick in August 2021. This appointment followed a woman’s report to police that Carrick had anally raped her multiple times during their five-month relationship. Det Sgt Mackennon denies the accusation that he failed to ensure Officer A adequately investigated the woman’s serious allegations against Carrick.
“The appropriate authority contends that the failures of the officer concerned are in part or wholly attributed to unconscious or conscious bias regarding Female E’s sex or race,” Kevin Saunders, for the appropriate authority, said.
The woman, known as Female E, later told police she wanted to stop the criminal investigation into Carrick, who was a serving police officer at the time, as she did not feel “mentally strong enough” to continue, the misconduct panel heard.
Mr Saunders told the hearing that this was not the woman retracting her allegation but rather a statement of “unwillingness or reluctance” to continue with the investigation.
The detective failed to ensure or direct Officer A to contact other witnesses in the matter, failed to ensure Officer A adequately investigated “derogatory, misogynistic, sexualised and grossly offensive Facebook messages” between Carrick and Female E’s partner and failed to contact Female E herself, Mr Saunders said.
The hearing was told Det Sgt Mackennon was “heavily critical of Female E’s credibility due to perceived inconsistencies” during a police interview and made “repeated references” to her immigration status.
Det Sgt Mackennon had also directed the use of an “inadequate streamlined investigation that prematurely concluded that former officer Carrick had no case to answer” and for Officer A to complete a “streamlined outcome report,” Mr Saunders told the hearing.
“The AA (appropriate authority) contends this was in any view never a case that should have been susceptible or subject to that streamlined procedure,” he said.
The misconduct probe had relied on a seven-sentence summary of a police interview with Carrick while the officers had failed to obtain the full 49-page transcript, the panel heard.
Cases involving accusations of rape “rise and fall on a careful analysis of credibility,” Mr Saunders said, adding: “One would’ve thought that if one were to adopt the streamlined process to dismiss the allegations that have been made by Female E, then it would’ve been rudimentary, fundamental to have properly reviewed the ABE (Achieving Best Evidence) interview before rejecting Female E’s credibility or before preferring the account given by former officer Carrick that was summarised in seven sentences.”
He said: “We are at this stage now where circumstances of very serious allegations have been made against a serving Met Police officer.
“The criminal investigation did not continue due to an unwillingness on the part of a vulnerable complainant but that did not in itself arise or does not in itself give rise to determination of a conduct investigation and I submit that that submission is uncontroversial.”
Mr Saunders said the accusations against Det Sgt Mackennon represented a “grave dereliction of duty” and it is alleged that, if found proven, his behaviour amounts to gross misconduct and could justify his dismissal.
In 2022 and 2023, Carrick pleaded guilty to 71 sexual offences, including 48 rapes against 12 other women over 17 years.
In November last year, he was convicted of molesting a 12-year-old child in the late 1980s and repeatedly raping and abusing a female ex-partner
The misconduct hearing continues.
