To restore public trust in policing, action is needed now

Editorial: Gross negligence and the culture of complacency have become embedded

The case of David Carrick illustrates a culture of complacency in forces such as the Met Police, now led by new Commissioner Mark Rowley (Kirsty O’Connor/PA)

In a pitiable footnote to the appalling story of PC David Carrick, the Metropolitan Police has finally dismissed him from the force – and only after he was found guilty of 49 charges, including 24 counts of rape against 12 women over an 18-year period. It speaks to a kind of institutional sclerosis that is hard to reconcile with the pace and demands of police work, still less public expectation.

It illustrates, painfully, the gross negligence and the culture of complacency that became embedded in a force to such an extent that, as the Met admits, more than 1,000 Metropolitan Police officers and staff remain in service despite being accused of sexual offences or domestic abuse of varying degrees of seriousness. In any organisation, even one as large as the Met, that would be a symptom of cancer eating away at its very fibre. For a police force to have been harbouring so many potentially heinous criminals is grotesque beyond belief. Yet it is where things are.

The Met is the largest force in the country and carries many national responsibilities such as guarding national monuments and counterterrorism. In the capital, it faces some unique challenges, and the recent cases have been especially horrific. But from what we know about city and county constabularies across the UK, many forces have problems similar in kind if not in scale – recent investigations into racism and misogyny in Gwent are hardly isolated.