From today’s London Evening Standard (hat-tip to womensgrid)
Rape case police ‘faked evidence to improve Met’s clear-up rate’
Three Metropolitan Police officers are facing prosecution over allegations that they used fake evidence to halt a rape inquiry.
Investigators suspect that part of the victim’s statement was fabricated to make it appear she had retracted her rape claim, allowing her complaint to be written off as a “no crime” incident.
The apparent aim was to improve the force’s clear-up rate for sex offences by reducing the number of unsolved cases left on its books….
…Today’s revelation is likely to lead to calls for a wider investigation into how the Met tackles sex crimes, amid suggestions that officers were placed under excessive pressure to write off cases that were hard to solve as “no crime” incidents.
The case involving the three officers follows a complaint from a woman who made a rape allegation at Walworth police station in May last year.
It is understood that the alleged attack followed a night out drinking with a man she met on the internet. After making her allegation, it is understood she indicated she would be unwilling to assist the police further or testify in court. That would have left the incident recorded as a crime but difficult to solve, leaving the Sapphire unit with an undetected rape to add to its figures.
Investigators from the IPCC are now understood to allege that the officer who took the woman’s statement added sentences to it saying that she now understood that, while she regretted her encounter with the man, she had given her consent and that no offence had taken place.
And people wonder why women are so reluctant to report rape.
Unsurprisingly, the consensus on Mumsnet at the moment in answer to the question “If you were raped would you report it” appears to be a resounding “not a fucking chance!”
Too Much To Say For Myself 
The fact these officers are facing prosecution does show that the Met is starting to take stuff seriously (although obviously not seriously enough to actually investigate properly in the first place)…
When the two officers investigating my case destroyed paperwork and faked evidence to get out of doing their job on the case, it took three years of complaint to get them investigated (prolonged by the fact the Supt in charge tried to forge my signature to say I withdrew the complaint) and even then all they got were ‘words of advice’.
At least someone is taking this seriously for once.
PS: one of the useless idiots on my case still works for the Met. The other moved to Dafyd Powys police who declined to discipline him for the infractions at the Met. I think I might bang my head against something hard now…
It does not surprise me, but writing down fabrications like that was a bit of a gamble by them (they are supposed to read it back or allow you to read it before signing). There are more sneaky ways like ‘misplacing’ evidence, delaying evidence until it can no longer be obtained. Quite difficult to prove against them, they will just claim “heavy workload, sorry, dropped the ball”.
As I said in the other thread, there are officers, albeit a minority, that sabotage certain investigations with regards to crimes against women.
and, of course, the money to investigate how the met handles rape cases has been cut (all £400,000 of it) so we can truly to happy that our government has women’s safety top of its agenda.