The British Home Office has introduced further measures to root out officers “not fit to serve” after coming under fire for doing too little in response to the serial rapist David Carrick, who avoided detection in police ranks for two decades.
The National Police Chiefs Council will now ask police forces across England and Wales to cross-check their officers against national police databases to identify offenders who might have “slipped through the net”.
The measure, announced on Wednesday, is meant to strengthen police vetting procedures in the wake of revelations surrounding Carrick, who was dismissed from London’s Metropolitan Police on Tuesday after pleading guilty to 49 sex offences, including 24 counts of rape.
The case has triggered public outrage and piled pressure on the government and police forces, particularly the Met, to accelerate reforms already under way following a string of previous scandals.
Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “There will be no place to hide for those who use their position to intimidate those women and girls, or those who have failed to act to reprimand or remove those people from office.”