Former officer Alan Greer was exposed as a serial rapist who managed to join the police force in 2009 despite a documented history of harassing women. This catastrophic recruitment failure has triggered an independent external review by the National Police Chiefs' Council.
How a 2005 Police Caution Failed to Stop Alan Greer
The entry of Alan Greer into the police service represents a direct violation of established safety protocols.. According to the report, Greer had been the subject of police investigations in 2002 and 2005 regarding inappropriate and harassing phone calls made to women, one of which resulted in a formal police caution. Despite these red flags, Greer was granted a position within Strathclyde Police in 2009.
This hiring decision contradicted the force's own internal regulations . A Strathclyde Police handbook from 2006 explicitly forbade the recruitment of individuals with cautions or convictions that could damage the reputation of the force or call the applicant's integrity into queston. The fact that Alan Greer was hired three years after these guidelines were set suggests a profound breakdown in how Strathclyde Police screened its candidates .
15 Identified Victims and the Abuse of Police Power
Once granted the authority of the law, Alan Greer utilized his position to target the most vulnerable members of society. As reported, Greer committed a series of violent sexual assaults and attempted murders over a seventeen-year career. His crimes included the rape of a woman he had met while on duty only hours prior, as well as violent assaults on numeerous sex workers encountered during his professional duties.
The predation extended into the police station itself. Alan Greer was found to have taken non-consensual and inappropriate photographs of his own female colleagues while working in safety training. While Police Scotland has officially identified 15 victims, there is a significant concern that the actual number of victims is far higher given the duration of Greer's employment and his access to targets through his official role.
The 8,800 Officers Who Missed Re-Vetting After 2013
The case of Alan Greer is not an isolated clerical error but part of a broader systemic failure following the 2013 merger of Scottish police forces. A 2023 review led by Chief Inspector Craig Naylor of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland revealed that approximately 8,800 police officers and staff—nearly one-third of the entire workforce—had not undergone re-vetting after the merger.
Craig Naylor stated that Alan Greer should never have been permitted to join the force and asserted that under his own leadership of vetting, Greer would have been rejected immediately . This gap in oversight allowed Greer to remain in the service for nearly two decades, effectively hiding in the administrative cracks of a massive institutional reorganization.
Lynn Ratcliff's Promise of Annual Integrity Testing
In the wake of the scandal, Assistant Chief Constable Lynn Ratcliff has emphasized that current vetting procedures are significantly more rigorous than those in place when Alan Greer was hired in 2009. Ratcliff noted that officers are now subject to routine re-vetting and annual integrity testing to prevent similar failures from recurring.
However, several critical questions remain unanswered. It is still unclear why the 2006 handbook guidelines were ignored during Greer's initial hire, and the report does not specify how many of the 8,800 un-vetted staff members may have similar red flags in their histories. Furthermore, the full extent of Greer's vicctim list remains unknown, as the officer committed suicide in May shortly after a police raid on his home, ending any possibility of a criminal trial.
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