Former British police officer David Carrick, 48, has been sentenced to 36 life sentences in front of Southwark Crown Court in London, after having pleaded guilty in recent months to 49 counts relating to 24 episodes of rape against 12 women, as well as sexual assault and harassment.
Crimes committed with impunity during nearly two decades of service despite repeated reports of suspicious behavior;
and whose unveiling has extended the list of historical or recent scandals that have emerged on the London Metropolitan Police (or Scotland Yard), the main police force in the United Kingdom, as well as a national counter-terrorism coordination center.
During the reading of the life sentence - which provides for a 30-year term for early release, without however excluding the legal benefits that make it usable on paper - Judge Cheema-Grubb evoked details of the accused's brutal violence , highlighting "the total contempt" for the victims before the uniform.
Not without branding Carrick as a man capable of turning into a "monster" if in the grip of alcohol;
as well as unable to show credible signs of repentance in the process.
The man, informed the same judge, is however at the moment detained in a psychiatric hospital, after a suicide attempt (revealed by Cheema-Grubb in the operative part as an act "of self-pity, not of remorse") in the maximum security prison of Belmarsh.