The police “must address the failings,” after a serving Metropolitan Police officer admitted to dozens of counts of rape and other offences, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday.
He met women on dating apps or while out socially, using his job to reassure and then intimidate them. He kept some locked in a tiny cupboard for hours, beat them, and urinated on them.
Before Carrick was arrested in 2021, he had already had multiple complaints against him.
It emerged on Monday, following the dropping of reporting restrictions on the case, that the Met had apologised to Carrick’s 12 victims.
Ministers have backed calls to strip Carrick’s police pension after his offending was described as one of the worst cases involving a serving police officer that the Crown Prosecution Service has dealt with.
Ahead of the Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Sunak said he knows MPs would be “as shocked and appalled” by Carrick’s case as he was, adding, “The abuse of power is truly sickening, and our thoughts are with his victims.”
Sunak told MPs he had met with ministers and others over the case and was to have further meetings later on in the day.
“The police must address the failings in this case, restore public confidence and ensure the safety of women and girls,” he said.
“There will be no place to hide for those who use their position to intimidate women and girls, or for those who fail to act to reprimand and remove people who are unfit for office.”
The Carrick case will be “top of the list” of discussions when Sunak meets Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley later on Wednesday, according to Downing Street.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council is to ask all forces to check their officers against national police databases to help identify anyone who has “slipped through the net” before vetting standards were toughened, in the wake of the Carrick case.
Baroness Louise Casey, who is already carrying out a review of the culture in the force, and neighbourhood police officers including new recruits, was also to be present at the Sunak’s visit to a London police station.
Casey has written to Home Secretary Suella Braverman, requesting to conduct a new inquiry unless Lady Elish Angiolini can extend her current non-statutory inquiry into the abduction, rape, and murder of Everard to include the actions of Carrick.
The court previously heard that Everard was made more vulnerable to false imprisonment because she went to a friend’s house for dinner at the height of the early 2021 lockdown.
In a statement to MPs on Tuesday, Braverman said Angiolini had agreed to extend her inquiry to include Carrick’s case.
She has also asked the College of Policing to strengthen the statutory code of practice for police vetting, making the obligations all forces must legally follow stricter and clearer.
“David Carrick’s sickening crimes are a stain on the police and he should never have been allowed to remain as an officer for so long,” she said.
“We are taking immediate steps to ensure predatory individuals are not only rooted out of the force, but that vetting and standards are strengthened to ensure they cannot join the police in the first place,” she added.
“Every day thousands of decent, hard-working police officers perform their duties with the utmost professionalism and I am sure they all share my disgust at his despicable betrayal of everything they stand for.”
The Home Office has also launched a review of the police disciplinary system to make sure officers who “are not fit to serve the public” and “fall short of the high standards expected of them” can be sacked.
Officials will examine decision making at misconduct hearings, and the panels tasked with leading them, as well as checking forces have the powers they need to take action against rogue officers. The review is expected to be completed within about four months.
More than 1,000 Metropolitan Police officers and staff who have previously been accused of domestic abuse or sexual offences are having their cases reviewed.
