Women are protesting against “police impunity” outside Southwark Crown Court where rapist policeman David Carrick is being sentenced.
Protestors from Women Against Rape (WAR) and other organisations have also been voicing their opposition to the anti-protest Public Order Bill outside the court today (Monday, February 6).
Carrick has already pleaded guilty to 85 offences, including dozens of rapes, against twelve victims, while working as a police officer between 2003 and 2020.
Crissie Amiss, from Women Against Rape and Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike, said: “It’s got to be cleaned out. It’s like a festering wound that’s been going on for decades… and if you look back at the sectors that have been criminalised by the police and turned into hooligans, there isn’t a safe space around police and that has to be changed.”
In a letter to Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley, WAR made a series of demands.
Among those were that “corrupt, prejudiced” officers are sacked “with immediate effect” and denied their pension.
It also called for better vetting of officers and improved protections for whistle-blowers.
The protestors also demanded the government halts its public order bill which would give police greater powers to shut down protests.
“While the head of the Met says he intends to root out corruption, the government wants to give police even more powers to stop us protesting under the Public Order Bill,” WAR said in a public statement.
The government’s proposed law hit a stumbling block at the House of Lords last week when peers sought to dilute it.
A slim majority (243-221) voted in favour of a higher threshold for what constitutes ‘serious disruption’, making it harder for police to intervene in protests.
Harriet Harman MP slams senior police officers who let rapist David Carrick rise through the ranks
Carrick is now considered one of the UK’s most prolific ever sex offenders and fresh details of his abuse have been revealed over the course of his sentencing.
The court today heard how he held a gun to a woman’s head and locked another in a small cupboard – just some of the vile crimes he’s admitted to.
He would discourage his victims from reporting him to the police by telling them they wouldn’t be believed, the court was told.
Hodo Ahmed of the campaign group Women of Colour, also represented at the protest, said: “We have to weigh up whether to report violence to the police, the same police who rape us and persecute our children and loved ones, or report us to the immigration authorities.”
All 10 police officers outside Southwark Crown Court today, after the David Carrick verdict, and policing the women against rape protesters were MALE. How insensitive is that?