David Carrick: Serial rapist police officer sacked by the Met

PC David Carrick has been sacked for gross misconduct from the force at a disciplinary hearing held in his absence in Earl’s Court, west London on Tuesday.

Carrick has admitted 49 offences against 12 women over a period spanning 18 years, including 24 rape charges.

The 48-year-old faces charges including the rape of nine different women, but some of the charges are multiple incident counts, meaning they relate to more than 80 sexual offences.

He was suspended from the force and held in custody after he was arrested for rape in October 2021.

The Met said his pay was stopped and an accelerated misconduct process was launched after he first entered guilty pleas to 43 charges in December.

Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe said she was in no doubt Carrick’s actions amounted to gross misconduct and said he should be dismissed from the Met without notice.

Detective Chief Inspector Iain Moor from the Bedfordshire outside Southwark Crown Court
Jonathan Brady

Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe said: “This is a sickening and horrific case with far reaching consequences for policing.”

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said "weak policies and decisions" meant Carrick was able to stay in the force for 20 years, despite repeated complaints being made against him.

He told BBC Breakfast: “We’ve let London down – he’s been a police officer for 20 years.

“Through a combination of weak policies and weak decisions, over those 20 years we missed opportunities when he joined and subsequently, as behaviour came to the fore that we should have removed him from policing.

“Whether it would have affected him being a sex offender I don’t know, but he shouldn’t have been doing it as a police officer.”

Carrick joined the Met Police in August 2001 and served with the force's parliamentary and diplomatic command from 2009 before he was suspended in October 2021.

The Metropolitan Police has apologised to victims after Carrick had come to the attention of police over nine incidents including allegations of rape, domestic violence, and harassment between 2000 and 2021.

He appeared at Southwark Crown Court on Monday to plead guilty to four counts of rape, false imprisonment, and indecent assault, relating to a 40-year-old woman in 2003.

In December at the Old Bailey, the serving Met officer who was known to his colleagues as "B*****d Dave", admitted 43 charges against 11 other women, including 20 counts of rape, between March 2004 and September 2020.

A prison van arrives at Southwark Crown Court
Jonathan Brady

The armed officer's role included policing parliamentary, government and diplomatic premises.

Carrick met some of the women through online dating sites such as Tinder and Badoo or on social occasions, using his position as a police officer to gain their trust.

He admitted raping nine of the women, with many of those attacks involving violence that would have left them physically injured, which included locking some in a small cupboard under the stairs in his Hertfordshire home for hours without food.

Others were forced to clean his house naked, urinated on and one woman was whipped with a belt.

He called women “fat and lazy” or his “slave” as he controlled them financially, isolated them from friends and family, and forbade them from speaking with other men or even their own children.