Barely two years after the murder of Sarah Everard by serving Met Police officer, Wayne Couzens, this week yet another serving officer on the force was found to be a violent, predatory misogynist. David Carrick carried out 85 serious offences over 17 years, including repeated incidents of rape and sexual violence that, like with Couzens, went completely unstopped by the Met despite multiple opportunities to act. A litany of complaints and incidents during his 21 years on the force – including grabbing a woman by the neck for which he was rebuked by ‘words of advice’ – were never acted upon. These incidents are not isolated cases or few and far between, and the worst part is, unrestricted online misogyny is already breeding the next generation of men like him.
From 2000, the Met Police were aware of serious allegations of violent or abusive behaviour committed by Carrick, beginning with malicious communications to a former partner in 2000. He is then accused of harassment and assault against a former partner during his first two years at the Met. By 2009, he had repeatedly raped and threatened three separate women, before being promoted to a Parliamentary protection role. A torrent of abuse, assault and rape attacks occurred in the following years, with the Met fully aware of his behaviour on no less than 8 occasions including being cleared by vetting procedures in 2017.
It took 21 years and dozens of missed opportunities for Carrick to be charged for any of these offences.
The exact same early warnings of violent, abusive and misogynistic behaviour were reported to the Met about Wayne Couzens, years before he murdered Sarah Everard. The exact same wholly inadequate and criminally irresponsible lack of action in response to repeated warnings about Carrick shows how the Met cannot protect women from violent misogyny. They should be utterly ashamed for letting down the victims of these men.
Another horrifying symmetry in these cases is the ability of Couzens and Carrick to control and silence their victims through power and position. Using his ID and uniform, Couzens was able to lure Sarah Everard to his vehicle. In September 2020, Carrick used the exact same method to make women feel safe before attacking them. He would tell them that they couldn’t speak out because he could ‘kill [them] and leave no evidence’, and that no one would believe them if they spoke out because he was a police officer. After his promotion to an armed protection role at Parliament, he would brandish his Met-issued gun to instil fear into those threatening to speak out.
It is utterly inconceivable how a prolific and grossly violent misogynist like Carrick was not stopped despite being widely known to be a clear threat to women…
Except, it isn’t. We’ve been here before.
And that is why the Met, why the Police, why the entire infrastructure of our society down to the classes we teach our kids in, need root and branch reform to stop there being a Sarah Everard, another David Carrick each and every year.
The danger to women and the threat of misogynistic men with power are the responsibility of every single member of our society to speak out about.
It starts with online Messiah’s like Andrew Tate, who brazenly boast of assaulting women in the way that Carrick did as part of a twisted, glorified, emasculated lifestyle. Even now, after his arrest and expulsion from social media, Tate’s sickening influence retains its access to the TikTok and YouTube feeds of boys as young as 10. As Dr Charlotte Proudman put it, when men like Tate amass 11.6 billion views on the internet, and women can’t even trust the police to keep rapists out of their ranks, how on Earth can they ever feel safe in our society?
Schools and parents need to be well informed of men like Tate spreading dangerous ideas online, and proactively educate their young people on the dangers they pose. Because this is how it starts, and this is why we must act now to stop the infection of violent misogyny into our next generation.
My final word in this gut-wrenching case is reserved for former Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick. She was forced to step down for failing to prevent known misogynists like Wayne Couzens from remaining on the force but appealed against the decision. The Met’s self-sustaining poisoned culture has left so many victims helpless, and so many vile men completely undetected.
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