The stench of decay at the Met Police is rank – it is a broken organisation which betrays Londoners and shames Britain

Broken force

THE stench of decay at the Met Police is rank.

It is a broken organisation which betrays Londoners and shames Britain.

When the murdering gun cop Wayne Couzens was handed a whole life term in 2021 we predicted he was far from a lone bad apple.

Even we did not imagine that just 16 months later on another Met officer would be outed as one of the most sadistic, predatory rapists ever known.

Or that the Met would have missed chance after chance to sack and prosecute him too.

David Carrick used his warrant card to gain victims’ trust.

He was a swaggering, macho, bodybuilding misogynist who believed his status gave him licence to torture, violate and rape women whose word would never be believed over his.

He wasn’t wrong on the latter.

Time and again, over 20 years, victims came forward to the Met and were ignored.

He was openly nicknamed “Bastard Dave” yet no action was taken.

Even after his arrest in mid-2021 Carrick was neither suspended nor named publicly.

Once he WAS identified — charged with another rape that October — a flood of victims came forward.

The Sun has argued for naming suspects on arrest.

This is why.

It builds cases early and prevents new offences.

It turned the stomach yesterday to watch the Met apologising again for destroying yet more women’s lives.

It is inexcusable and appalling.

Carrick was first hired despite being reported for burglary and domestic abuse.

Even with his later record he was approved to use firearms and passed a Counter Terrorism Check. How?

The Met has 118 cops off frontline duties over sex claims and 43 over racism.

They must be suspended now and fired if accusations are proved.

Two dismal chiefs did the Met no favours — but the faults go back much further.

Those who let Carrick and Couzens get away with it so long must not enjoy that luxury themselves.

Two decades of failure must be fully investigated and those responsible fired.

How will new boss Mark Rowley then rebuild trust?

Class war

HOW dare militant Mary Bousted further harm Generation Covid with school strikes?

It is disgusting that she has led teachers from the NEU to walk out over an above-inflation pay claim that she surely knows is unaffordable.

But the strike is only superficially over money.

Bousted hates Tories and craves a Labour Government. Schools are the unions’ new front.

Pupils, especially from the poorest families, are their cannon fodder.

So are those parents who will have to take time off work on strike days.

For GCSE and A-level kids, their schooling already half-destroyed by lockdowns, it is a sickening and callous new blow.