Met Police recruited serial sex offenders to boost numbers

A new review has concluded that  the Met Police lowered their vetting standards in order to boost recruitment from 2013 to 2023. This meant hiring a serial rapist who is “one of the UK’s worst sex offenders“.

Channel 4 reported on 8 January that the Met Police had compromised public safety by failing to do proper checks on “thousands of officers and staff”. It added that:

131 of them, including two serial rapists, went on to commit crimes or misconduct.

A review has found that 131 officers and staff in the Metropolitan Police committed crimes or misconduct after they were not properly vetted.

They include two serial rapists. David Carrick is one of the UK's worst sex offenders. pic.twitter.com/AbtKVxhd5N

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) January 8, 2026

The BBC explained the case of infamous sex offender David Carrick, saying:

Carrick, who was given 37 life sentences for his crimes, was not properly vetted in 2017, with checks failing to reveal an allegation of domestic abuse against him.

In 2021, Channel 4 also put out a Dispatches programme about “sexual misconduct by serving British police officers”.

Institutional delays, failings, and misogynistic abuse at the Met Police and beyond

This new scandal with the Met Police comes just weeks after police received a:

‘super-complaint’ over ‘inhumane’ delays in sexual offences investigations

UK police forces also have a long history of systemic failings in investigating child sexual abuse and violence against women and girls. In particular, there has too often been a culture of judging, not believing or even blaming survivors of sexual violence.

The British state also unjustifiably sent undercover police officers to infiltrate hundreds of left-wing groups with a decades-long political-policing project in service of the rich and powerful. And one woman whom an officer groomed and manipulated during this campaign previously told the Canary that:

the institutional sexism along with the institutional racism and institutional corruption and institutional misogyny… play a massive part in everything that they did

This “boys’ club” of spycops, expert Tom Fowler explained:

was a rape gang that was covering for each other and celebrating the sexual conquest they had of women in the field.

Intelligence agency MI5, meanwhile, lied about “a misogynistic neo-Nazi state agent who attacked his girlfriend with a machete”.

In short, the organisations most people expect to protect them from abuse – like the Met Police – have too often failed them. And while utterly despicable, the latest revelation that police hired “one of the UK’s worst sex offenders” to boost its numbers is painfully unsurprising.

Featured image via the Canary