Hundreds of UK police officers should never have passed vetting, inspector says

Hundreds of people have joined the police in the past three years who should never have passed their background checks, it has been revealed.

Matt Parr, the boss of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, has said many officers failed to declare “big red flags” such as “prior convictions”.

He said some have had “links with criminals that are too close and not explained” and were “not being entirely honest on their application”.

One in 10 officers looked at by Mr Parr’s team should never have made it through vetting, he said, and while it was not a random sample, it still amounts to hundreds of people who shouldn’t have been hired.

“Anybody who has got any blemish on their record shouldn’t automatically be disbarred from being a police officer, that just wouldn’t be fair,” Mr Parr told Sky News’ Sophie Ridge on Sunday.

“But where there is a question, where there is doubt, there should be measures put in place to monitor these people to keep a close eye on them, and that just is not happening either."

He said the problem is “systemic” and that the importance of keeping the “wrong people” out of policing and making sure they don’t stay has “not quite been recognised”.

Mr Parr said public trust in policing is “at a low ebb”, particularly for London’s Metropolitan Police after violent crimes against women by serving officers including Wayne Couzens and David Carrick.

The Met is currently in special measures, placing the force under additional scrutiny and requiring it to report to inspectors more frequently.

“In the past I’ve described it as complacent, arrogant, defensive, and I think there has been a reluctance to accept the scale of the problems,” said Mr Parr.

The Home Office ordered a major review of the police disciplinary process last month after Carrick was convicted over a decades long campaign of sexual violence against women.

The firearms officer, who served the Met for more than 20 years, committed offences against 12 women between 2003 and 2020. He admitted 49 charges, including 24 counts of rape.

There were complaints about his behaviour before he joined the force in 2001, then again as a probationer in 2002 and numerous times throughout his policing career until 2021.

Despite nine incidents coming to the police's attention over two decades, he was only suspended from duty from October 2021.

Carrick was arrested for rape, and his pay was finally stopped in December 2022 when he admitted the majority of the charges he faced.

Mr Parr said most, if not all, serving female police officers have had to endure sexual assault and inappropriate behaviour from fellow officers.

He added: “The culture of misogyny within policing is something that is there, it’s real and it has absolutely got to be dealt with.”

Sir Mark Rowley took over as Met Commissioner in September following the resignation of Dame Cressida Dick over a string of scandals.

She stayed on following the rape and murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of serving officer Wayne Couzens in March 2021.

But in February the following year she announced she was stepping down after racist, sexist and homophobic messages sent among officers at Charing Cross police station emerged.

Mr Parr said he believes the force’s new leadership team has “smelt the coffee” and “understand that they can’t any longer write this off as a few bad apples”, but said they still “have a long way to go”.

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