Met officer cleared of misconduct in Carrick case

A former Met Police detective accused of failing to oversee a thorough investigation into serial rapist David Carrick has been cleared of gross misconduct, a tribunal has heard.

Carrick, 51, a former armed officer in the Met, is one of the UK's most prolific sex offenders and is currently serving 37 life sentences for attacks on more than a dozen women.

Det Sgt Ray Mackennon was in charge of an officer who was appointed to investigate rape allegations made against Carrick by a former partner in 2021, but was accused of bias in his handling of the case.

Mackennon denied the claims and on Friday, a panel found that none of the allegations raised against him had been proven.

The accusations included claims his failure to ensure an adequate investigation stemmed from an "unconscious bias" towards the complainant's gender or race.

However, Mackennon "did not fail in his duties", panel chairman commander Jason Prins told the tribunal hearing in south London.

In 2021, Mackennon worked as a detective constable within the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) - a Met police division responsible for investigating complaints about police officers.

During this period, he had a large workload of approximately 150 cases and had oversight of about half of those, the tribunal was told.

In this case, it was alleged Mackennon had failed to ensure the officer working under him - "Officer A" - adequately investigated the allegations against Carrick made by the woman referred to as "Female E".

This included failure to ensure Officer A contacted Female E and "streamlining" a disciplinary process.

However, the panel heard the decision was made after Female E said she wanted to stop the criminal investigation into Carrick as she did not feel "mentally strong enough" to continue.

This led to the criminal investigation by Hertfordshire Police being discontinued.

The panel chairman added it was "therefore not unreasonable" for Mackennon to rely on the force's assessment that there were "no further lines of inquiry to investigate" in relation to Carrick.

"Det Sgt Mackennon had a very large number of cases at the time and this may have impacted the amount of attention Det Sgt Mackennon was able to afford this case," Commander Prins added.

Mackennon previously told the tribunal the DPS was the most "overwhelming" department he had worked in, having transferred from counter terrorism.

He had also told the panel it was "often the case" that a misconduct investigation against a police officer would be "streamlined" if the corresponding criminal investigation was discontinued.

In 2022 and 2023, Carrick pleaded guilty to 71 sexual offences, including 48 rapes against 12 women over 17 years.

In November last year, he was convicted of molesting a 12-year-old child in the late 1980s and repeatedly raping and abusing a female ex-partner.

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