Met ‘overwhelmed’ by web child abuse cases

THOUSANDS of children are in danger because Britain’s largest police force is not doing enough to protect them from paedophiles, a damning report found yesterday.

The police watchdog said a surge in online child sex abuse cases had ‘overwhelmed’ Scotland Yard. Some offenders who viewed indecent images of youngsters on the internet could be escaping justice because some units only had the capacity to examine two of their electronic devices for evidence.

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary said the Met was missing opportunities to act quickly to protect children and prevent offending.

It found there was a ‘serious problem’ in nearly half the investigations it had examined involving depraved images of children online.

The findings follow a report in 2016 which found the force was so obsessed with tackling theft it was ignoring youngsters in danger.

HMIC said the Met was failing to cope as social media is used to distribute indecent images on a ‘global scale’. The Met said it had ‘a lot more work to do’ to get its child protection arrangements up to scratch.