Senior officers face sack over missed rapist clues
1 hour 2 mins ago
<cite class="auth">
Tim Castle</cite>
Three London police officers face dismissal over a botched investigation that allowed a serial rapist to keep attacking women for four years after he was identified as a suspect, a police watchdog said on Monday.
Children's football coach Kirk Reid was jailed for life last year for 28 attacks, including two rapes and two indecent assaults. He had been stopped in 2004 and identified as a potential suspect for a series of attacks on women in the Wandsworth area of south London, but was not arrested until the case was transferred to a specialist unit in 2008. Police have linked Reid to as many as 100 other sexual assaults committed since 2001.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said there had been a "sustained failure by senior supervisory officers to give this investigation the priority it required and to get a grip on what was plainly a long-standing pattern of terrifying offences committed within a single borough." It said a superintendent and two inspectors would face a misconduct panel, which could result in their dismissal.
A chief superintendent and a detective sergeant received written warnings. "The failure to take a serial sex offender off the streets of London years earlier is a shameful chapter in the history of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS)," said Deborah Glass, IPCC Commissioner for London. Reid was the second serious sex attacker in recent years to slip through the net and expose investigative failures in London.
Five officers were disciplined after taxi driver rapist John Worboys, who drugged and attacked female passengers across south London, evaded detection between 2006 and 2008. "When considered alongside the failings in the case of John Worboys, their overall effect on the confidence of the victims of sexual offences in the police response cannot be over-stated," Glass added.
Scotland Yard Commander Maxine de Brunner apologised for the force's shortcomings in the Reid investigation. "Following (Reid's) trial, the MPS apologised for the failings in the original investigation that led to Reid being able to continue to offend for another four years," she said. "I repeat the apology today. We are deeply sorry for the harm suffered by all of his victims and for failing to bring Reid to justice earlier."
(Editing by Steve Addison)
