Henry Nowak | 10 Shocking Police Scandals in the UK

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[00:00:00]and the convictions of the men who became known as the Birmingham 6 were eventually overturned.

[00:00:05]>> Welcome to Watch Mojo and in this unranked list, we're taking a deep dive into the biggest policing controversies and outrages in Britain. As division widens, the consensus is over the concern on police conduct.

[00:00:20]>> David Carrick. For over a decade, Carrick served in the Metropolitan Police. He used his police ID to assure his victims they were safe with him.

[00:00:31]>> Throughout his career, he was plagued with allegations of misconduct and was even accused of domestic abuse as early as 2002, something that the police investigated but didn't take seriously.

[00:00:44]>> Tar imprisoned them in his cupboard at home, forced them to commit sex acts on and with him. Despite rising through the ranks of the Mets, Carrick was a serial offender who seriously assaulted many women he located online over a 17-year period. Finally, another police complaint emerged in 2021, and this time it was taken seriously. Carrick was arrested and hit with almost 50 charges.

[00:01:11]It was expected to be a difficult trial, but Carrick ultimately pleaded guilty to all the charges and was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison. I say I recognize that we failed and I'm sorry and I know we've let um we've let women down. Child Q >> PC Ray was in a position of power when she and two other police officers strip searched a school girl.

[00:01:35]>> In 2020, a teenager was suspected by her teachers of possessing cannabis.

[00:01:40]Teachers alleged they could smell it and so called the police after their own search of her belongings turned up nothing. The police went to extreme lengths, however, strip searching the minor unauthorized without her being accompanied by an appropriate adult.

[00:01:55]>> A misconduct panel concluded the search was disproportionate and degrading.

[00:02:00]>> When the story became public knowledge years later, there was outrage with police and teachers accused of racial profiling because the child was black.

[00:02:09]Her mother complained and police regulators eventually launched an investigation into gross misconduct with strip search policies being reviewed nationwide in the wake of the scandal.

[00:02:21]>> Of those almost half were conducted without an appropriate adult present.

[00:02:26]>> The Yorkshire Ripper. For 6 years, West Yorkshire and Manchester lived in fear with a serial killer on the loose.

[00:02:34]>> It was the biggest manhunt in British criminal history. As early as 1969, years before Peter Suckliff's first murder, he was investigated by police for assaulting a woman. Despite this known propensity for violence against women, and despite numerous surviving victims who told police their asalent was from Yorkshire, Suckliffe evaded justice until 1981.

[00:02:57]>> I'll live with that for the rest of my life.

[00:03:01]I'll live with being a party to the wrong decision. West Yorkshire police mishandled the Yorkshire Ripper investigation at every turn, interviewing Sirlliffe nine times, but never following up because of poor recordkeeping. It wasn't until he was arrested for driving with false number plates that he was questioned yet again and admitted to being the Ripper. He was convicted for 13 murders and seven attempted murders.

[00:03:28]>> I was totally gutted because I remembered interviewing the man. I remembered my suspicions, my colleagueu suspicions and what we'd written about him and I thought what might have been >> the death of Ian Tomlinson. 2009 saw widespread unrest in London with one large protest in April centering on the G20 summit. It was a largely peaceful protest but police responded aggressively by kettling protesters.

[00:03:59]>> This was the strike. In one incident, a police officer pushed a man, Ian Tomlinson, to the ground. He wasn't there for the protests, but a bystander in the area. Video footage showed Tomlinson hit with a police baton and then shoved over. No other officers helped. He was assisted by a protester, but minutes later collapsed and died.

[00:04:22]>> You just think that this this guy's meant to, you know, serve and protect people. He didn't serve and protect our dad that day. and uh we just don't feel we've got any justice at all.

[00:04:31]>> An investigation was launched and the officer responsible, Simon Harwood, was tried for manslaughter in 2012. He was acquitted but dismissed from the police which apologized for his quotes use of excessive and unlawful force.

[00:04:46]>> I take full responsibility for Simon Harwood and I would like to offer my sincere apologies and condolences to the family of Ian Tomlinson.

[00:04:55]>> The Hillsborough disaster. The crowds have been making their way to Hillsborough again today. Many fewer and in an allgether different mood from that of yesterday afternoon. April 15th, 1989 was the darkest day in the history of English football following a deadly crush in the standing pens at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield South Yorkshire during a match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. 97 people died in total. I was at the match yesterday and saw firsthand the tragedy before my eyes.

[00:05:28]>> There have been numerous investigations and it wasn't until 2016 the inquests ruled what the victims and their families had known all along. The crush was caused by the gross negligence of South Yorkshire police.

[00:05:41]>> Senior South Yorkshire officers in the absence of their own chief constable declined to discuss the policing of yesterday's match and left at once.

[00:05:50]Police went ensuring the pens didn't get overcrowded and later blamed the fans for the disaster. In 2017, numerous officers were charged with a litany of offenses for their actions. These charges were dropped, but victims are still seeking justice to this day. Among those who died on soccer's blackest day were many lifelong Liverpool fans. Many had saved money specially for the trip.

[00:06:14]>> The Birmingham Six. A year after the bombing, six men were wrongfully convicted. And to date, no one has been brought to justice. One of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history was the imprisonment of the Birmingham 6, a group of Northern Irishmen falsely convicted and sentenced for the 1974 Birmingham Pub bombings. 21 people died in the explosions, but none of the men arrested were involved. They were severely mistreated by West Midland's police, alleging that police officers staged a mock execution for them while in custody. A group of men were charged and found guilty of the bombing, but it was a famous miscarriage of justice.

[00:06:57]After numerous appeals claiming that they had been physically and psychologically abused by police and forced to sign false confessions, investigations were reopened with much of the forensic evidence being thrown out. The convictions were deemed unsafe and all six were released in 1991.

[00:07:15]They've since received roughly a million pounds each in compensation.

[00:07:20]>> And this was trenchons and hands.

[00:07:22]>> Anything anything they had like we got the lot >> spy cops.

[00:07:26]>> It was an entire institution that put a police officer in my bed in order to spy on me and all my friends and family. In 2010, news began to emerge that for decades, the Metropolitan Police had been sending officers undercover into activist groups. While undercover, multiple police officers engaged in intimate relationships with female members of the groups, some lasting for years and even producing children, all while the women were unaware of who their partner actually was. Police officers at the top level sanctioned the practice of using the names of dead babies for undercover officers.

[00:08:07]>> Initially, five women were known to have been involved with undercover officers, but following a public inquiry, 60 emerged with the undercover scheme dating back to the late 1960s. In 2015, the Met made a lengthy statement apologizing for the men's actions and admitting that its undercover operations had put women in danger. though 10 years on the inquiry is still ongoing.

[00:08:32]>> I knew that like individually our stories could be written off as >> uh well you know that's just a rogue officer but together collectively >> absolutely >> it shows a pattern and >> Henry Novak this was their son the night of the attack there is now an investigation into the officers who dismissed him and failed to recognize his distress. In December 2025, 18-year-old student Henry Novak was murdered in Southampton by Vikram Digua.

[00:09:01]Months later, at the attacker's murder trial, it was revealed to the public that Digua had claimed to officers attending the scene that he'd been the victim of a racist attack at Novak's hands. Police proceeded to handcuff and arrest Novak while he lay dying on the floor. Of the four officers at the scene, three are still serving and not subject to any restrictions. The case has led to widespread unrest in the UK with more arrests coming after protests broke out in June 2026. Digua has been sentenced to life in prison, but questions about how the police responded remain with the incident being referred for further investigation. Novak's family have said they don't want their son's death to quote be used to create further division. This is not a case about seekism. This is not a case about racism. This is a case about murder.

[00:09:54]>> The murder of Sarah Everard.

[00:09:56]>> We believe that Sarah died because he was a police officer. She would never have got into a stranger's car. The words of Sarah Everard's family today as a report found the man who abused his position to murder her could and should have been stopped. In a watershed moment for modern policing in March 2021, a young woman named Sarah Everard was kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered on her walk home. She was missing for a week with her body eventually found and the killer rapidly courts. The culprit, a serving police officer named Wayne Cousins, who'd been captured on CCTV throughout the crime. The Angelini inquiry today found that he'd moved seamlessly between forces without thorough vetting with red flags missed or ignored.

[00:10:44]>> He was formally charged with kidnapping and murder, pleading guilty 3 months later and getting sentenced to life in prison. In the aftermath, it became clear that concerns around cousin's behavior had been raised multiple times during his policing career, but had never been fully investigated. Nor were these older allegations discovered during vetting when he joined the Mets.

[00:11:06]>> Today's report calls for a nationwide review of all allegations of sexual offenses against officers on the police national database.

[00:11:14]>> The murder of Steven Lawrence on April 22nd, 1993. 18-year-old black student Steven Lawrence was murdered at a bus stop in a racist attack.

[00:11:25]>> Two teenagers accused of murdering the black school boy Steven Lawrence have been released from custody. Those suspects were identified, they weren't charged with Lawrence's family blaming systematic failures in the Metropolitan Police for not investigating thoroughly and not building a case strong enough to bring Steven's killer to justice.

[00:11:45]>> My son's been murdered and none of these officers, the justice system, the politicians, nobody cared. After years of campaigning, there was a public inquiry which ruled that the Mets was incompetent and biased against Lawrence.

[00:12:00]It wasn't until 2012 that justice was served when two men, David Norris and Gary Dobson, were charged and tried.

[00:12:08]Both were found guilty. Additional inquiries have since been ordered into corruption and wider police misbehavior.

[00:12:16]Today, more than three decades on, and for the first time, one of his killers, David Norris, publicly admitted his part in his murder.

[00:12:25]>> Let us know what video you want us to do next in those comments below.