Met chief slams justice system post-Levy as ‘offender bailed doors from victim’
Sir Mark Rowley revealed another sex offender was recently bailed to an address two doors down from his victim
Last updated 13th Aug 2026
Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has continued his criticisms of the justice system in the wake of Simon Levy’s sentencing, saying another sex offender was recently bailed to an address two doors down from his victim.
It comes after he criticised the courts on Wednesday for releasing Levy on bail while trying to defend his force’s role in the catalogue of justice system failings which meant the serial sex attacker was repeatedly freed.
On Thursday, Sir Mark told the BBC’s Today programme: “There’s no-one from the court service, no-one from CPS, no-one from probation stepping forward and talking about their failures.”
The Met “will always be publicly accountable, we’re the agency closest to the public”, he added.
“The reason we’re really worried and concerned by what’s going on is we’re the ones who see victims day in and day out … we had a case the other day of a sex offender who should have been remanded in custody bailed to an address two doors down from his victim.
“These things are happening routinely and it really worries us because we’re close to those victims.”
His officers regularly handle cases of “prolific knife offenders” who are repeatedly charged with carrying the weapons, and sometimes using them, but bailed back onto the streets, he said.
“It’s harder and harder to get these cases through the courts. We’ve got cases in London, assaulting emergency worker cases, domestic violence triangulation cases, being listed for 2029, 2030 – those risks are carried in the community”, Sir Mark added.
Nothing happens when offenders are arrested for breaching their electronic tags “so it becomes a pointless endeavour” if it is “zero jeopardy”, he added.
There are currently 10,800 registered sex offenders in London and the number grows by 100 every three months, Sir Mark told the programme.
“Meanwhile, the Met that I lead today is 4,000 people smaller than it was four years ago, this is a systemic disinvestment by successive governments in the agencies that keep people safe: police, prisons, courts, etc.
“The whole system is struggling and because the risk eventually lands in communities, then people say, ‘well, the police need to deal with this’ – we need to be realistic about what’s achievable.
“A lot of those 10,800 people are dangerous, that is far more than our counter-terrorism colleagues are monitoring on a daily basis closely.”
Levy, 40, killed grandmother Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, in March 2025 and mother-of-four Sheryl Wilkins, 39, in August that year, as his spiral of offending escalated from sexual assaults on the Tube to double murder.
He suffocated both women in sexually-motivated attacks, with Ms Valencia-Trujillo found in a largely abandoned block of flats on the Aylesbury estate in south-east London, and Ms Wilkins behind a car park wall near Tottenham High Road, north London.
When he turned killer, Levy had already subjected a third woman to a rape in the same car park where Ms Wilkins’ body was later found, and the surviving victim had told police where her attacker lived.
But she was not formally interviewed until after Levy had killed twice, in a catalogue of justice system failings that meant Levy was repeatedly set free on bail despite a growing number of attacks on women.
The Ministry of Justice and the CPS have been approached for comment.