Reporting by The Guardian has revealed that systemic vetting failures inside the Metropolitan Police Service allowed serial rapists and other criminals to remain in uniform for years, endangering the public and fellow officers.

According to an internal Met review obtained by The Guardian, background checks were lowered or abandoned between 2013 and 2023 to speed up recruitment. More than 5,000 officers and staff were hired without proper vetting, while the force cannot confirm whether required checks were completed on around 17,000 others.

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The consequences were severe. The review identified 131 officers who went on to commit criminal or serious misconduct offences, including rape, child sexual assault, drug crimes and hate offences.

Among the most infamous cases was David Carrick, one of Britain’s worst sex offenders, who used his position as a Met officer to intimidate victims. Carrick was convicted in 2023 of 48 rapes and 85 offences in total, many committed after he passed revetting in 2017, despite a history of complaints.

Another officer, Cliff Mitchell, was hired despite a prior child rape allegation and was later convicted of 10 rape offences, including attacks on a child under 13.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told The Guardian the failures amounted to “a dereliction of the Met’s duty to keep London safe,” adding that the public expects police to be rigorously vetted — not waved through to meet hiring targets.

The problems intensified during the government’s police uplift drive to rapidly recruit 20,000 officers, when refusal rates dropped and safeguards were quietly relaxed.

The Met has since removed 1,500 officers under Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, an implicit admission of how badly standards had slipped.