Serial Rapist Officer Passed Police Vetting Despite Warnings
A police officer exposed as a violent serial rapist passed vetting to join Strathclyde Police in 2009 despite staff knowing of two prior reports of criminal behaviour towards women — one ending in a formal caution — the BBC revealed. Alan Greer’s offending over a 17-year career included raping a vulnerable woman hours after meeting her on duty; fifteen victims have been identified so far. The disclosure contradicts Police Scotland’s assurance last month that there had been no “missed opportunities over the years”.
The vetting file is the scandal within the scandal: the system did not fail to know — it knew, recorded, and admitted him anyway, then spent seventeen years not noticing what followed. Police Scotland’s retreat from “no missed opportunities” to a semantic defence about which question it thought it was answering will deepen rather than repair the damage, because institutional candour after the fact is precisely what such cases test. The pattern — predators drawn to the warrant card, vetting that waves them through, colleagues who sensed and said nothing — is the one Couzens made a national reckoning, and each new case asks whether the reckoning changed anything. Watch the inquiry now inevitable in Scotland — and how many of the feared further victims come forward.