Serial rapist PC David Carrick dismissed from Met Police

PC David Carrick has been sacked from the Metropolitan Police for gross misconduct.

48-year-old Carrick, who's from Stevenage, was suspended from the force and held in custody after he was arrested for rape in October 2021. He did not attend the hearing in Earl's Court, west London.

The Met said his pay was stopped and an accelerated misconduct process was launched after he first entered guilty pleas to 43 charges in December.

Tuesday's hearing was due to be held in private because Carrick still faced trial but was then opened to the media to watch on screens in a nearby building after he pleaded guilty to the remaining six counts at Southwark Crown Court on Monday.

Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe said she was in no doubt Carrick's actions amounted to gross misconduct and said he should be dismissed from the Met without notice.

She acknowledged the "courage and suffering" of Carrick's victims, adding: "This is a sickening and horrific case with far reaching consequences for policing. I truly hope to never see its like again."

Carrick has now admitted 49 charges, including 24 counts of rape against 12 women over an 18-year period.

Former victims' commissioner Vera Baird said the case of serial rapist Pc David Carrick "absolutely takes one's breath away".

She told a radio station: "The Metropolitan Police seem incapable of not employing - and furthermore retaining - some quite evil people.

"He appears to have been reassessed since the murder of Sarah Everard, since the Charing Cross misogyny scandal came out.

"Where exactly is the change in culture that we have all been told would occur after that catastrophic death now a couple of years ago?"

She added that it was not the Met that exposed Carrick but one of the victims who "had the courage" to go to another police force.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the sustained employment of Pc David Carrick was a "spectacular failure" in his force.

Asked to explain, he said: "This is about weak decision-making in professional standards, not joining the dots between related incidents, and poor policies, and that all comes together to mean he was a police officer for 20 years and for a large part of this he was a predatory rapist."

Sir Mark agreed it was a "spectacular failure" by his force.

He said: "You can't say anything else - it absolutely is.

"I have been crystal clear from coming into post ... that one of the top planks of my responsibilities is to rebuild our integrity, and part of that is to take on those who corrupt our integrity - people like David Carrick and, frankly, many others.

"We have been too weak on this, systematically, for some time."

Sir Mark refused to accept that trust in the Met is now "fundamentally broken".

He said the force is reviewing 800 historic cases, reviewing personal data, and suspending more officers.

"I am not going to pretend that the words I say today are going to tackle the issues that are in many women's minds across London, across the country, who are going to be hesitant and questioning of whether they can trust the police," he said.

"What I'm saying is we are deadly serious about this."

Sir Mark Rowley said opportunities to remove Pc David Carrick from policing had been missed due to weak policies and weak decisions.

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner said: "What he's done to his victims is truly abhorrent. Their courage in coming forward is truly admirable. But we've let London down - he's been a police officer for 20 years.

"Through a combination of weak policies and weak decisions, over those 20 years we missed opportunities when he joined and subsequently, as behaviour came to the fore that we should have removed him from policing.

"Whether it would have affected him being a sex offender I don't know, but he shouldn't have been doing it as a police officer."

Sir Mark said it is "not defensible" that Carrick's record had not been checked in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard, before he became Commissioner.

The force is now reviewing around 1,000 members of staff and officers who have previously been accused of domestic abuse or sexual violence.

Sir Mark said some will be incidents where a neighbour has heard raised voices, but others will be behaviour that is "very concerning".

The Met chief said he has hundreds of officers who should not be in the job and is determined to get rid of them.

He added that he knows public trust can only be earned over time as people see what action he is taking.

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