Suspected serial rapists are to be monitored by police using covert counter-terrorism techniques such as close surveillance and mobile telephone taps, police have revealed.
Offenders will be pursued by the world’s biggest rape investigation squad, which was set up by the Metropolitan Police in the wake of two failed inquiries that left two serial sex attackers at large for years.
The tactics could be used when officers have identified a suspect but do not have enough evidence to make an arrest.
The new Sapphire squad, which has weeded out incompetent officers and recruited 200 new ones, is led by Detective Chief Superintendent Caroline Bates and Commander Simon Foy, head of Homicide and Serious Crime Command.
Giving details of the new methods, Mr Foy said: “It’s about surveillance, intelligence relating to the use of mobile phones. We may get into the use of interception, all sorts of stuff — undercover work.
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“We are seeking to up our game.”
Ms Bates added: “Our access to other parts of the organisation is good — we have access to all the Met’s intelligence systems.
“We are getting support from financial teams, the fraud squad, into finding people and getting bad character evidence.”
She said that intelligence showed that people arrested for sex offences had previous convictions for murder and firearms offences. It was, she said, about getting the bad guys.
“These are seriously dangerous people and by doing our job properly you will see an impact across the Met. Serious sexual offences are rarely committed by people who do not do anything else, they are very dangerous people involved in serious criminality.”
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The idea to update the team was first mooted in early 2008 by Sir Ian Blair, the previous Commissioner, but the go-ahead was given only as details of the failures to catch the serial rapists John Worboys and Kirk Reid were coming to light at the beginning of this year.
Mr Foy said: “While we were conscious of Worboys and Reid, work had begun before the full awfulness of those two cases became clear. It was not purely a reaction to Worboys and Reid.”
The consequences of the two cases gave a “strong incentive for us to do what we had to do”, he added.
Rather than have 32 teams in each borough, it was decided to bring the rape investigation team under one command with 24/7 coverage of all boroughs.
Senior officers also wanted to bring in better officers. Sapphire teams have not always been seen by detectives as the best place to go to further their careers but that is now changing.
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Mr Foy said that by bringing in good intelligence support and linking it with the deployment of covert tactics it would make it “a more technically demanding role which detectives will see as developing their career”.
Ms Bates said that everyone already in the team would have to reapply for their jobs, allowing incompetent officers to be reassigned to other units.
The new team will have 400 officers from next year, with 26 purely working on intelligence gathering..
Ms Bates heads the team with three superintendents, five chief inspectors and 22 detective inspectors.