Thousands of police officers not properly vetted ‘putting women’s safety at risk’

Thousands of police officers have not been properly vetted because of failures that campaigners say are putting women at risk and undermining public trust.

An analysis by The Independent shows that, at the most recent inspection, around 1,500 officers and staff in just 10 forces had no vetting or had been subject to checks that had expired or were inappropriate for their role.

The number will be far higher for all forces in England and Wales, but the true figure is unknown because assessments by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) are still under way.

At West Midlands Police, England’s second-largest force, a report from 2021 showed that 2,300 officers and staff had not been properly vetted, accounting for one in five personnel. They have since launched a crackdown and reduced that figure to zero.

Anna Birley, a councillor who co-founded the Reclaim These Streets group after Sarah Everard’s murder, said the figures show that “police don’t care about women”.

“How else could they explain choosing to allow thousands of staff and officers without the necessary vetting to continue in their posts?” she told The Independent.

“Numbers on this scale don’t happen by accident – they happen because the people in charge don’t think it’s a priority to ensure their officers are fit for the job.”

The processes are under scrutiny following horrific revelations that serial rapist David Carrick was able to stay in the Metropolitan Police for 20 years, with the force repeatedly deciding he had “no case to answer” for misconduct after reports of domestic abuse were filed against him.

Carrick passed vetting on joining Britain’s largest force, despite the fact that it had investigated him for harassing a former partner months before. He was allowed to become an armed officer and then passed a delayed re-vetting in 2017.

Dame Vera Baird KC, the former victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, condemned the “amazingly little trouble forces take to make sure that their officers are fit to have power”.

Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said police officers with the authority to use force, enter people’s homes and detain people must be rigorously checked.

“We know serious delays to re-vetting and weak vetting processes contributed, amongst other failings, to the Met missing a pattern of offending behaviour in the case of Carrick,” she added.

“We haven’t arrived at this situation overnight. We need political accountability for the huge backlogs in vetting, the poor welfare and supervision of officers, and for forces being stripped of the specialism needed to investigate rape and domestic abuse – crimes which disproportionately affect women.”

HMIC told The Independent that past recommendations, contained in damning reports warning that rapists and domestic abusers were being allowed to enter and remain in policing, had not been acted on.

A spokesperson said: “We previously recommended that by July 2020, all police forces that hadn’t yet done so should vet all personnel to the right standard. When we inspected police vetting last year, we found that this recommendation remained outstanding for some forces.

“We also found that forces’ understanding of who occupies more sensitive posts is sometimes amateurish. As a result, there are occasions when forces have police officers and staff in these posts who aren’t vetted to the right level.

“If the police are to rebuild public trust and tackle misogyny, it is vital that they act on our recommendations.”

A report issued in November on vetting and misogyny uncovered instances where officers had been granted clearance after committing offences including domestic-abuse-related assaults and indecent exposure, and after being accused of sexual assault.

It warned that there have been “many warning signs that these systems aren’t working well enough” over the past decade.

They include cases going back to 2011 of other rapist police officers, including one who raped vulnerable women selected from police cells, and another predator who remained an officer despite sexually assaulting female colleagues and members of the public and receiving “love letters” from 10-year-old girls.

HMIC found that initial vetting was often “not rigorous enough”, with references not checked, qualifications not confirmed, false and incomplete information overlooked, and applicants selected without face-to-face meetings.

Inspector Matt Parr said some officers “who are assessed as suitable when they join may become unsuitable later in their career”, and that better systems need to be in place to detect and dismiss them.

“At the moment, it is too easy for the wrong people both to join and to stay in the police. Too many recent events prove this,” he added.

The home secretary has asked HMIC to carry out an urgent review of the implementation of past recommendations. There is a separate probe into the police disciplinary process, and Carrick’s case is being rolled into the public inquiry originally sparked by the murder of Everard.

The College of Policing, which sets vetting standards, admitted processes have “not been good enough” but said changes would help to ensure that proper checks are made.