Roddis was caught after a client spotted that the clock was connected to his laptop and suspected something was up. She found an identical clock on Amazon which had a secret webcam and contacted the police. In a BBC interview she describes how the police responded.
One of the main arguments against the Defund the Police movement is that we need police to investigate crime. But this is a classic example of police being provided with an allegation that deserves investigation and instead refusing to do so, and making the victim to do their work for them.I rang 101 [the police non-emergency number] and was booked in for an appointment the following day with two male PCs, where I showed them a picture of the clock and they asked "Are you sure it was that clock? Are you sure it was recording you?"
I said I could not be certain that it was, but it looks exactly the same and felt it was worth investigating regardless.
Then they said that they had spoken to a sergeant and that the best way forward was to confirm with the masseur if he had a legitimate reason to be recording people because they said he might feel that he needs to protect himself against accusations.
They indicated that they wanted me to go back and ask him why he was recording me, at which I pointed out I was five-and-a-half months pregnant and vulnerable and I didn't think it was a good idea to send a pregnant woman alone to ask him why he had recorded her. [my emphasis]
It was only after the victim made a complaint about how the case had been handled that they did anything. And when they did they found the clock had been used to make around 2,000 videos of over 900 women over the span of 2 years. As with almost every case of women reporting men for sexual crimes, whatever the level of severity, they turn out to be only the latest in a long line of victims.
Depressingly, despite having footage of more than 900 women, he was only charged with voyeurism against 9.
In the same article Det Insp Dave Savill, from Cambridgeshire Police, the force that investigated Roddis, was quoted as saying that officers,
I'm trying to square this with them being unable to identify 890 of his victims despite having their images, the dates of their visits to him and, presumably, access to his bookings. Did they even put out a public appeal for women who'd seen him to come forward? I can't find any mention of one."put a lot of time and effort and expertise into this investigation and the result shows the merit of the work we've done".
The court of appeals has, this week, decided that 4 years for secretly filming 900+ women was too harsh a sentence and so reduced it to 3. That's just over a day per victim.
In my googling I did, however, come across a similar case from 2018. Sunderland GP Thair Altaii filmed female patients during consultations and examinations and after a female patient suspected she was being covertly filmed he was discovered to have over 19,000 images of women, in various stages of undress. Despite this he was only found guilty on three counts of voyeurism and sentenced to 14 months in prison. Again, we have people who presumably have bookings and records of their interactions with the doctor yet somehow police are unable to match his victims with his patients. And he gets barely a slap on the wrist.