Police committing sexual crimes

[Woodchopper]

More importantly, I want to go back to something I mentioned in my last post that has been stuck in my mind ever since. Due to the huge number of rape charges against Carrick it's hard to parse individual allegations against the resulting charges but from my little bit of research it really looks like the rape allegation made in October 2021 was not prosecuted. The Evening Standard reported,

[Carrick] denied a further count of rape in September 2020 relating to a 13th woman, whose allegation triggered the investigation, and the Crown Prosecution Service decided it was not in the public interest to proceed to trial on the charge.

And this is backed up by the CPS which writes,

Carrick was charged with offences which related to 13 women. After careful consideration the decision was reached to accept his not guilty plea in relation to one of the women. 

The more I think about this the more baffled I feel. This woman went to the police to report a rape by one of their officers, something that must have taken huge bravery and something she's highly unlikely to do if it was a false accusation. Her report led to him finally being investigated and determined to be one of the most prolific rapists known in the UK and yet somehow her testimony wasn't deemed sufficiently believable to be prosecuted. It feels like such a huge denial of justice for her.

It’s from the Mail, so take it or leave it, but apparently:

Carrick was suspended from duty following his arrest and remanded in custody as the investigation 'snowballed' following the publicity surrounding the case, according to police.

He denied raping the woman and prosecutors said it was not in the public interest to proceed to trial on the charge as he admitted sex attacks on a dozen other women who came forward following the first complaint.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... women.html

Presumably he wouldn’t get a longer sentence if he’d been found guilty for a 13th time. What isn’t reported is the attitude of the victim. Perhaps the CPS denied her justice in order to save money, or perhaps they saved the victim from the ordeal of reliving in public what happened to her and having a defence barrister call let a liar.

[jimbob]

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/senior-met-p ... -p.rn-and/

Senior Met Police officer accused of having a secret room full of child p.rn and boys' pants 'found dead at home'
18 January 2023, 07:47


Met officers and the police watchdog IOPC launched a joint investigation into Watkinson, and they found the room in a July 2021 raid. The abuse images were Category A and B, meaning the abuse captured was of the worst levels. There was no evidence that he had personally abused any child.

Chief Inspector

[Formerly AvP]

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/senior-met-p ... -p.rn-and/

Senior Met Police officer accused of having a secret room full of child p.rn and boys' pants 'found dead at home'
18 January 2023, 07:47


Met officers and the police watchdog IOPC launched a joint investigation into Watkinson, and they found the room in a July 2021 raid. The abuse images were Category A and B, meaning the abuse captured was of the worst levels. There was no evidence that he had personally abused any child.

Chief Inspector

Oh yes, this IOPC https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... -complaint watchdog: no doubt it will be a curious incident.

[snoozeofreason]

More importantly, I want to go back to something I mentioned in my last post that has been stuck in my mind ever since. Due to the huge number of rape charges against Carrick it's hard to parse individual allegations against the resulting charges but from my little bit of research it really looks like the rape allegation made in October 2021 was not prosecuted. The Evening Standard reported,

[Carrick] denied a further count of rape in September 2020 relating to a 13th woman, whose allegation triggered the investigation, and the Crown Prosecution Service decided it was not in the public interest to proceed to trial on the charge.

And this is backed up by the CPS which writes,

Carrick was charged with offences which related to 13 women. After careful consideration the decision was reached to accept his not guilty plea in relation to one of the women. 

The more I think about this the more baffled I feel. This woman went to the police to report a rape by one of their officers, something that must have taken huge bravery and something she's highly unlikely to do if it was a false accusation. Her report led to him finally being investigated and determined to be one of the most prolific rapists known in the UK and yet somehow her testimony wasn't deemed sufficiently believable to be prosecuted. It feels like such a huge denial of justice for her.

It’s from the Mail, so take it or leave it, but apparently:

Carrick was suspended from duty following his arrest and remanded in custody as the investigation 'snowballed' following the publicity surrounding the case, according to police.

He denied raping the woman and prosecutors said it was not in the public interest to proceed to trial on the charge as he admitted sex attacks on a dozen other women who came forward following the first complaint.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... women.html

Presumably he wouldn’t get a longer sentence if he’d been found guilty for a 13th time. What isn’t reported is the attitude of the victim. Perhaps the CPS denied her justice in order to save money, or perhaps they saved the victim from the ordeal of reliving in public what happened to her and having a defence barrister call let a liar.

The problems that I have been highlighting in the criminal barristers thread would probably have a bearing on her attitude. A contested rape case takes, on average, around three years to reach trial. That's a long time to wait when the trial may not result in any change to the sentence that the offender serves. She would give her evidence at a private "Section 28 Hearing", so it wouldn't quite be as public as your post makes it sound but, as Kirsty Brimelow, chair of the Criminal Barristers' Association points out, that sort of support is meaningless if the criminal justice system does not have the resources to bring cases to court in a timely fashion.

I suppose there would be political pressure to expedite a trial that was as high profile as this one, but I don't know how much freedom the court system has to do that, and of course pushing this case up the queue would mean further delays to other cases that might be just as horrendous, even though they haven't had as much coverage in the media.

[jimbob]

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/senior-met-p ... -p.rn-and/

Senior Met Police officer accused of having a secret room full of child p.rn and boys' pants 'found dead at home'
18 January 2023, 07:47


Met officers and the police watchdog IOPC launched a joint investigation into Watkinson, and they found the room in a July 2021 raid. The abuse images were Category A and B, meaning the abuse captured was of the worst levels. There was no evidence that he had personally abused any child.

Chief Inspector

Oh yes, this IOPC https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... -complaint watchdog: no doubt it will be a curious incident.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/fo ... st13990673


Via Nessie (a Scottish retired cop who's attitude towards police forces changed after details emerged from the Ian Tomlinson case)

-with-offences-relating-to-child-sex-abuse-images-12790331[/url]

"Jack Addis, 63, of no fixed address and Jeremy Laxton, 62, from Lincolnshire, will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 9 February.
Both left the Metropolitan Police more than a decade ago."[/QUOTE]
And my reply, below, which I will repeat here.


How many more cases before the Met stops saying it's "unbelievable".

Also. It shows a (justified) feeling of impunity to have identified himself as an active paedophile to colleagues. I think there are questions to be asked how he did that without giving himself away to at least one colleague who would be disgusted enough to report him.

[dyqik]

That broken link should be:

https://news.sky.com/story/two-retired- ... s-12790331

I think

[jimbob]

That broken link should be:

https://news.sky.com/story/two-retired- ... s-12790331

I think

Yes, that was a mess

[Fishnut]

Not all of these are sexual crimes (I hope) but this shows just how little the police care about policing their own.

Home Office figures show 2,718 misconduct allegations were made against Avon and Somerset Constabulary officers and handled under the formal complaints process in the year to April 2022.

Of these, 2,460 (91%) resulted in no action being required against the police officers involved.

Just three allegations were referred to official misconduct proceedings and 54 were referred to the reflective practice review process – when an officer’s behaviour falls short of expectations but does not amount to misconduct...

Across England and Wales, 87,786 allegations were made against police officers and handled under the formal complaints process in 2021-22. The majority (88%) found no action was required.

[El Pollo Diablo]

"For the greater good"

[Fishnut]

A Dorset police officer has been charged with eight sexual offences including two charges of rape. He's been suspended while investigations take place.

[Fishnut]

At this rate they won't need to reform the Met, all their officers will be in prison and it'll have to be dissolved due to lack of staff.

Met PC Jordan Pascal has been charged with rape of a woman in 2009. He joined the Met in 2012. If I'm reading the article correctly, he was working for Essex Police in 2009.

[Lew Dolby]

Reminds me of a friend of mine who was a police officer (non-Met). He said whenever they found a bad-un , they gave them the option of sack or apply for a transfer to the Met 'cos the Met were always short staffed and would take anyone.

[Fishnut]

Another day, another Met police officer jailed. This time for 4 years for false imprisonment and actual bodily harm.

PC Sam Grigg attacked his female housemate while she was making lunch. He taped her wrists together and then her ankles and taped her mouth shut.

After she was bound the doorbell rang and Grigg went to answer it, with his 23-year-old victim trying to crawl to the kitchen to find a knife to cut herself free.

Mr Agbamu said Grigg returned and “seemed to enjoy” watching her efforts to open drawers with her feet, “telling her she would never be able to set herself free”...

The court heard that after his victim said she would report him, he told her: “Who are you going to tell? I’m the police.”

While he claims he wasn't going to rape her, he was found to have carried out the attack for his own “sexual gratification” and that he had an “obsession with BDSM conduct*”. Searches of his room found rolls of duct tape, cable ties, rope and unauthorised pairs of police-issue handcuffs and batons. A former partner reported that he had used police handcuffs during sexual acts.

The victim told her landlady who made an online report to police. In an astounding admission that complaints go into a black hole rather than get investigated,

The court heard that there was a delay in it reaching Metropolitan Police detectives because the “system understood that she was trying to make a complaint against a police officer rather than reporting a crime”.

There are some glimmers that the Met may finally be learning though,

He has been added to a barred list meaning that he will not be able to work for police or associated bodies and watchdogs in future.

* Clearly missing that a central tenet of BDSM is CONSENT

[jimbob]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... t-exposure

The Met said the PC was tasked with investigating incidents at a fast food restaurant in Swanley, Kent, where Couzens repeatedly indecently exposed himself in February 2021.

Six days before Couzens – then an armed Met officer – kidnapped and then murdered Everard, on 27 February 2021, he was seen by staff at the restaurant in his car with his genitalia visible.

The female staff were upset and recorded the registration plate – which if checked would show the black Seat belonged to Couzens – and details from a credit card he used to pay for food were also recovered. The incident was reported to police the next day.

The Met said: “On 28 February 2021, the Met received an allegation of exposure at a location in Swanley, Kent. This was recorded and passed to a local officer to investigate. By the time of Sarah Everard’s kidnap, on 3 March 2021, the investigation was not concluded and Couzens’ occupation had not been identified.”

FFS - tracing the owner of the numberplate would have taken minutes.

[Fishnut]

Another day, another Met officer in court for sexual offences.

PC Fabian Aguilar-Delgado attended the victim's home after a report of domestic violence on 24 May 2020, three weeks after starting the job. It seems he and his colleague went to the property, took the woman's report of domestic violence and arranged an emergency locksmith, then returned to their car. Aguilar-Delgado then returned to the property (why, I don't know) and after following the victim upstairs (spoiler for description of sexual assault) Spoiler:

allegedly groped her, kissed her, then pulled her breast out of her bra and sucked on it, announcing he had a "hard on".

He then returned to the car and waited with his colleague for the locksmith to show up. After they left the woman reported the incident to the police. Incredibly they decided the best response to an allegation of a uniformed male police officer assaulting a woman in her home was to send two uniformed male officers to her home to take her statement. Not surprisingly, she was reluctant to let them and refused to let them go to her bedroom (why they wanted to go there when she said the assault took place at the top of the stairs, I don't know). Samples taken from her revealed Aguilar-Delgado's DNA on her nipple and breast.

The victim is alcohol-dependent and had been drinking before the Aguilar-Delgado and his colleague arrived. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this factored into him deciding it was worth attempting the assault as he could use her drinking to discredit her. He was only three weeks into the job. Either he came to the job with the aim of using his position in authority to abuse women or he quickly learned that was a 'perk'. I would very much like to know what his colleague thought he was doing alone in the property and why he thought it was acceptable that he wasn't supervised so soon after starting. Even if he's given the lead, surely someone should be there to provide oversight and support while he's still learning how to do the job?

[Fishnut]

At the end of 2021 the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and College of Policing set out priority actions to improve police responses to violence against women and girls. Part of this involved producing annual national assessments and they have just published their baselines based on data gathered between 1 October 2021 and 31 March 2022.

The full report can be found here.

The Guardian did a pretty good summary and commentary.

In the 6 month study period 1,483 unique allegations were reported against 1,539 police officers – or 0.7% of the workforce. (As there's more officers than incidents I'm assuming that some allegations included more than one officer).

55% of the cases (653) were conduct matters - defined by the IOPC as "a matter where no complaint has been received, but where there is an indication that a person serving with the police may have committed a criminal offence or behaved in a manner that would justify disciplinary proceedings."

For the conduct allegations, 48% concerned discreditable conduct carried outside working hours, while 19% related to sexual assault, 13% to sexual harassment and 6% to abuse of position for a sexual purpose.

The remaining 45% of cases (524) were complaints from the public, mostly concerning the use of force. But,

9% concerned harassing behaviour, 6% related to assault and 5% abuse of position for a sexual purpose.

Now, you could argue that 0.7% of the workforce is not a bad statistic, but I think that for a single 6 month period, these figures are pretty bad for an organisation whose Statement of Common Purpose is,

to uphold the law fairly and firmly; to prevent crime; to pursue and bring to justice those who break the law; to keep the Queen’s peace; to protect, help and reassure the community; and to be seen to do this with integrity, common sense and sound judgement.

Being a single six-month period not all the investigations had been finalised.

Just under half the complaints and nearly three-quarters of the conduct cases still had not been finalised when the data was collected, but where cases had closed, 70% of conduct cases (136) and 91% of complaint cases (290) were thrown out, with just 13 officers and staff sacked for misconduct, and nobody fired as a result of public complaints.

The percentage of cases being 'thrown out' seems incredibly high to me. Maybe I'm being naive but saying that only 9% of public complaints are valid seems unlikely. Indeed, Maggie Blyth, the National Police Chiefs’ Council coordinator for violence against women and girls, felt it necessary to point out that,

...data released today is intended to be a critical baseline for assessing police performance over time. It presents a picture from over a year ago rather than today. Over the past 18 months, Police Chiefs have focused on identifying wrongdoing in police ranks, strengthening misconduct investigations and toughening sanctions.

This strengthens my views that the complaint procedures weren't fit for purpose and were more about clearing officer than offering any kind of proper check on their behaviour. Future reports will show whether or not things are changing.

It's also worth noting that even the report writers think that in some areas the reporting is underestimating actual incidents,

The document notes that the figures in some areas, especially allegations of domestic abuse and inappropriate sexual behaviour, may be higher since many incidents go unreported, and there are some problems with recording processes, but it hopes it will be a tool for measuring progress.

[dyqik]

On that last point - the reporting rates here are unlikely to be higher than for the same crimes committed by members of the public. Because in at least some cases (particularly domestic violence) the victim will know that the perpetrator is a police officer, and to have been at least gaslit that "no one will believe them".

[Fishnut]

The Casey report is being published tomorrow. It was commissioned after the murder of Sarah Everard and is looking at whether Met failings in her case resulted at least in part from institutional biases. According to the Guardian, it was will say that the Met is "riddled with deep-seated racism, sexism and homophobia and has failed to change despite numerous official reviews urging it to do so".

I suspect the Casey report will go the way of the Macpherson report which was published in 1999. It found deep-seated institutional racism and while there have been some improvements, a review published 22 years later still found "persistent, deep rooted and unjustified racial disparities in key areas."

The review was written in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests, and notes,

There has been a systematic failure on the part of the police service and Government, over many years, to take race inequality in policing seriously enough.

We found that there has been an increased focus within policing on race inequality since the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in the USA in 2020, which shone a spotlight on race injustice across the world. Reforms announced by individual forces, the NPCC, HMICFRS and the IOPC are welcome. However, it should not have required video footage of the murder of a Black man by a police officer and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests to concentrate the minds of the Government and the police on the imperative of race equality...

...the fact that Black and minority ethnic police organisations told us that they continue to experience and bear witness to institutional racism in our police forces today should be grounds enough for policing leaders, the Home Office and Government to take seriously the imperative for change.

Racism and sexism in the Met, or the wider police force, are not and have never been due to a 'few bad apples'. They are ingrained at an institutional level. The Macpherson report made 70 recommendations over a wide range of themes and a 2009 review found that while there had been progress on many of them, 'The Committee expressed concern that progress had been slowest “within the police workforce itself”'. Little has changed in the intervening years.

The horrific murder of Stephen Lawrence and subsequent inquiry did little to make policing less racist. I have little hope that the Casey report will do anything to make policing less sexist.

[Fishnut]

From the Guardian,
A Metropolitan police Safer Schools officer has been jailed for five years over a string of child sexual abuse offences. PC Hussain Chehab admitted to four counts of sexual activity with a girl aged 13 to 15 and offences linked to indecent images of children.

The Met said some of these offences were committed while he was posted at a north London school between May and August 2021.

[jimbob]

https://news.sky.com/story/metropolitan ... r-12849786

Metropolitan Police officer found guilty of rape after admitting accessing victim's details through police computer


Ireland Murdock searched for the name of his victim on a police system and accessed a restricted crime report relating to her. The Met has said it dismissed the former officer at the "earliest possible opportunity".
Tuesday 4 April 2023 16:10, UK

[Sciolus]

What? Impossible! Metropolitan Police Federation chairman Ken Marsh said “I think it is a bit disingenuous to say there could be another David Carrick or Wayne Couzens in the Met Police. I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.” Are you saying he's a bullshitter?

[Fishnut]

Another one from the Met. Two officers have been arrested following an incident in Kingston on April 30. One officer was arrested on suspicion of kidnap, rape and common assault. The kidnap and common assault charges have already been dropped but he has been bailed to return on a date in June in relation to the rape. The other was arrested on suspicion of kidnap and possession of class A drugs and a third man was was arrested on suspicion of kidnap but both were released with no further action after consultation with the CPS. The officers have been suspended following the arrests.

I get the feeling this is already being swept under the rug. I hope the victim gets justice but it's seeming doubtful.

[IvanV]

What? Impossible! Metropolitan Police Federation chairman Ken Marsh said “I think it is a bit disingenuous to say there could be another David Carrick or Wayne Couzens in the Met Police. I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.” Are you saying he's a bullshitter?

It is unfortunately a common blindspot, even hubris, of people who lead such organisations to think, we have solved that problem, so it won't recur. It is an aphorism that what distinguishes the wise is a clear understanding of just what it is they do not understand. People who think they have it all solved are unlikely to be very wise. They have failed to gain a true understanding of the difficulty of the problems they are trying to solve.

Another organisation that suffered badly from "we can solve it all" hubris was Ofgem, who reached such a believe around about 8 or 10 years ago. I just laughed, because I know there are some very powerful theoretical considerations that prove you can't - a kind of regulatory economic equivalent of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The key to it is that there are trade-offs in regulation, and the regulator can't win on both sides of the trade-off. The best they can do is choose there favourite balancing point. It was unsurprising that a regulator that thought they had solved it all was slow to detect and react when problems were in fact mounting.

So Ken Marsh is the one being disingenuous.

[Fishnut]

Two stories on how Wayne Couzens could have been caught earlier. Samantha Lee, the police officer who was sent to investigate reports of indecent exposure at McDonalds has been found guilty of gross misconduct and barred for life from being a police officer.

She failed to secure CCTV footage when she visited the restaurant on 3 March, hours before Couzens abducted Everard, 33, in Clapham, south-west London.

Lee, 29, lied when later questioned about her actions, claiming she believed the CCTV footage at the restaurant was deleted automatically.

She did a piss-poor job and I'm not crying any tears over her guilty verdict. She quit being an officer while under investigation but I can't help but think she's been made the scapegoat for systemic failings that led her to understand that such a poor investigation was permissible. If Couzens hadn't gone on to murder Sarah Everard I suspect no-one would have taken a second look at her investigation.

The second story is a case in point. It's another "bungled" investigation, this time in 2015, following reports of a man driving "naked from the waist down and his penis was “sticking up in the car”." They had all the information they needed to identify Couzens as the driver but they didn't bother investigating properly. Unlike Lee, the officer in charge of that investigation hasn't been named and hasn't been fired.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct investigated, leading to a Kent police sergeant, known as X, facing a misconduct hearing. He was cleared of misconduct and continues to serve, but was found to have breached standards for duties and responsibilities. He will undergo “reflective practice”, as well as training to boost his investigative skills, which Kent police said “is not a formal disciplinary outcome”.

[gosling]

I had the same thoughts about scapegoating when I saw the reports about this court case. Even if she had secured the CCTV footage, it was only a few hours before the abduction. By the time the CCTV had been reviewed, Couzens identified and recognized as being a police officer, it would have been too late to save Sarah Everard. If there had been a proper investigation in 2015 then she would still be alive.