The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) have today published their response to the recommendation of the super-complaint bodies (College of Policing, IOPC and HMICFRS) reporting on how chief constables have or will improve the response to police perpetrated domestic abuse allegations. CWJ’s response to the NPCC publication, can be found here.
CWJ submitted our Police Super-Complaint into the failure to address police perpetrated domestic abuse in March 2020. A year later Sarah Everard was murdered by a serving police officer and since then there have been increasingly disturbing reports of police perpetrated abuse culminating in the news last week that David Carrick pleaded guilty to a total of 85 offences of violence against 12 women.
We have today published a timeline of Carrick’s offending (below) which reveals how, if the recommendations that we made had been implemented, Carrick would likely have been stopped in his tracks much earlier.
In light of what we have learnt, CWJ today publishes a 12-point plan of what must change to effectively tackle police perpetrated domestic abuse and restore women’s trust in policing.
Nogah Ofer, author of CWJ’s super-complaint said,
“When we published our police super complaint three years ago, police perpetrated domestic abuse was barely known about. We sought to raise a hidden problem indicating serious systemic failures that had led to perpetrators getting away with it and survivors being victimised. Over that time the murderer Wayne Couzens and the serial rapist David Carrick have demonstrated the sense of impunity and escalation of violence that results when police turn a blind eye”
Harriet Wistrich, director of CWJ said
“The public and the policing bodies have woken up to one of the biggest scandals in British policing history. We now need to see not only words but also actions to root out abusers. The recommendations for change reported by the NPCC are a start but do not go far enough. Women must have confidence that when they report officers the system will not be stacked against them."
Notes:
DAVID CARRICK: WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE TO STOP HIM?
This infographic sets out the known developments in Met Officer and serial rapist David Carrick’s career, alongside proposals for change made by Centre for Women’s Justice since 2020, and the police response to them. Most of the proposals come from our 2020 super-complaint to the Metropolitan Police on the subject of police-perpetrated domestic violence. Carrick’s case sadly demonstrates how, had our recommendations been adopted earlier, Carrick’s escalating campaign of sexual offending may have been stopped sooner. Since the super-complaint, approximately 160 more women have come forward to report their experiences of domestic abuse by police officers. Carrick, like Wayne Couzens, is sadly not an isolated case – reform is urgently needed.
