Hundreds of predatory police f ired for having sex with victims of crime

HUNDREDS of predatory policemen have been sacked for sexually exploiting victims of crime, new figures reveal.

A total of 227 officers in England and Wales were fired or convicted for targeting at least 424 women between 2015 and 2018 – the equivalent of one every five days.

Alarmingly, 90 officers had sexual contact with their victims while on duty.

One in six complainants had dialled 999 after suffering domestic violence or sexual assault – only to be victimised again by a policeman or CSO.

The figures were compiled with help from a former Scotland Yard police chief for an ITV documentary set to be broadcast this week. Lorraine Tate, 42, from Hatfield, Hertfordshire, said she was targeted after she witnessed the brutal beating of a taxi driver outside her flat.

PC Simon Salway obtained her details as a witness, but then sent her sexual text messages and a relationship started. Miss Tate later discovered the officer had a girlfriend and a baby and ended the relationship – but then found out she was pregnant.

When she confronted Salway’s colleagues, she said she was told: ‘Who’s going to believe a Hatfield slag over us in uniform?’

Salway, 39, was jailed for misconduct in 2015 for having sex with five vulnerable women. Miss Tate believes he would have been caught sooner if her complaint had been acted upon.

Another woman, a domestic violence victim called Julie, was bombarded with suggestive texts by Lancashire PC Ilshan Ali after he was assigned to her case. One message read: ‘Your duvet is the luckiest thing going, it gets to wrap itself around you.’ It later emerged that Ali had targeted four vulnerable women – three of them domestic violence victims. Last year he was jailed for two years for misconduct.

Figures show seven times more police officers than doctors or teachers were fired or convicted for sexual misconduct in the six months to October 2018.

David Gilbertson, a former commander at Scotland Yard, said he started compiling a database of abuse in 2015 because he was alarmed at the absence of official figures. He added: ‘The scale of offending had got beyond anything that I had imagined was possible.’ But he warned that many women may be suffering in silence.

A report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary last month criticised predatory officers but claimed the scale of the problem was tiny.