THREE METROPOLITAN Police officers are to face disciplinary hearings following an investigation into a “shameful” series of failures which left a serial sex attacker free for five years to assault dozens of women.
Kirk Reid was jailed for life last year for attacks on almost 30 women in Wandsworth, south London. But detectives believe he could have carried out offences against up to 100 more between 2001 and the date of his arrest.
Releasing the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s (IPCC) findings, its London commissioner, Deborah Glass, said: “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.”
Reid, a taxi driver, was first stopped in December 2002 by officers. They detained him after watching him trail a woman they suspected he was going to rob. His name was added at the time to the police database.
In January 2004 a witness dialled 999 to report that a man in a red Volkswagen Golf had assaulted a woman, and though the car’s registration number was traced to Reid nothing further happened. In February 2004 a police officer again noted the Golf after the driver had hooted his horn at a lone woman. The officer spoke to Reid and later identified him as a suspect in five other indecent assaults.
Again, nothing more happened. The inquiry into the serial sex attacks was left with just one officer working on it after one detective was assigned to robbery investigations and another went on a career break. Responsibility was transferred eventually to another Metropolitan Police unit, which identified Reid as the prime suspect within three days of beginning work, the IPCC reported yesterday.
One police superintendent and two inspectors are now to face misconduct hearings and could be sacked. Last night there were complaints that the local police stations in the districts where Reid carried out his attacks over eight years had not put enough officers on the case because they were too busy trying to meet government targets for reducing burglaries.
The IPCC agreed that staffing problems hindered the investigation. “The lack of resources allocated to the investigation, pressure in relation to performance and targets and the constant change of heads of department undoubtedly did not help,” said Ms Glass.
“But none of these factors provides real mitigation for the 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,” she said.
Reid, described as articulate and intelligent, went to psychiatrists in 2002 and, again, between 2004-2006 for help to deal with his desires to attack women, police said during his trial.
He kept hundreds of violent videos on his computer of women being raped and assaulted – most as they were shown walking on dark streets, the method he used to attack his victims.
