Ex-police officer jailed for 'campaign of abuse'

FORMER Metropolitan Police officer has been jailed for a "campaign of abuse" which included the rapes of two women.

- HELEN WILLIAM [e-mail]

Jake Cummings, of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, was a special constable in Dorset and then a police officer in London when he carried out a campaign of "extensive controlling, coercive behaviour" against three women which covered a total of just under five years through to 2024.

He was jailed by St Albans Crown Court yesterday for a total of 16 years with a two-year extension for 10 offences. He was found guilty by a jury of three counts of coercive controlling behaviour, two counts of voyeurism and two counts of rape at a retrial.

Cummings, 26, also admitted two counts of stalking and was found guilty by a jury of a third count of the same offence.

Cummings gave no response from the dock as Judge Bilal Siddique told him: "The totality of your offending demonstrates you don't take no for an answer from women."

He added: "You were a serving police officer. Your offending must have been abundantly obvious to you."

Cummings, right, deployed a “strikingly similar pattern of abuse” against his victims, the judge said.

Cummings bombarded them with messages and isolated them from friends, family and colleagues, and there was additional degradation and humiliation of the women he raped who suffered severe psychological harm.

The judge said "this was anything but impulsive offending" adding: "The period of offending - it was nearly five years beginning in July 2019 to February 2024 - that can only be described as as nothing other than a campaign of abuse."