Met officer says use of tracking apps was ‘joint decision’ with complainant

A serving Metropolitan Police officer accused of rape and stalking claimed one of his alleged victims forced him to download location-tracking apps because she “did not trust him”.

Pc Jake Cummings, 25, is charged with two counts of rape, three counts of stalking, three counts of controlling and coercive behaviour and three counts of voyeurism against three women.

The offences, which are alleged to have occurred between July 2019 and February this year, include Cummings watching one of the alleged victims using security cameras, and detaining another in his car.

The jury at his trial at St Albans Crown Court previously heard Cummings is accused of using phone apps called Life360 and Team Viewer to track the first complainant’s location, as well as creating multiple social media accounts to message her, and driving down the road where she lived uninvited.

On Wednesday, the court heard his interview with Hertfordshire Police, in which he claimed the complainant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, made him download the apps so she could “monitor his whereabouts”.

Cummings said the woman had gone on his phone and found “general flirting” with another woman, which had made her “quite agitated [and] quite annoyed”.

He said: “She told me pretty much every day she did not trust me. She wanted to know where I was.”

Cummings added: “I had no privacy whatsoever.”

Put to him by the officers that he would go to the complainant’s place of work uninvited and wait outside, the defendant said: “I was only ever there if I was invited.”

Cummings was also asked by officers if he filmed a video of himself having sex with the complainant on his phone.

He said: “Yes. She wanted to try it.

“I said ‘Do you want me to delete it’, and she said ‘Keep it’.”

He also denied making new social media accounts to continue messaging the woman after she had blocked him, adding he did not remember if the volume of messages he received from the woman was the same as those he sent.

In the interview, Cummings was asked about his memory of the alleged offences and said: “If something significant had happened I would be able to remember it.

“Obviously the stuff you are asking about is very specific.”

He denied ever driving around looking for the complainant.

The defendant said he only had photos or videos of the complainant on his phone that she was aware of, and that he never kept a video without her consent.

Asked about another of the complainants, Cummings said the Team Viewer app was “definitely not” used between them, but the woman used the Life360 app to see when he was travelling to visit her.

Asked whose decision it was to get that app, he replied: “I think it was a joint decision.”

Cummings told the interviewers he had suffered from anxiety since he was 17, which included “not being good enough and just a bit of a burden”.

The defendant said: “I will admit that I did ask for a lot of reassurance.”

Cummings denied calling the complainant names, insulting her or tripping her up in public.

He said he and the woman had sex “quite consistently” but denied rape, adding: “I know for a fact that [the complainant] has never said that she didn’t want sex.

“If she said no, it would not happen.”

Asked if he had taken photos of the complainant at a hotel during a trip to Edinburgh, Cummings said: “We were messing around, joking, laughing.

“She took photos of me, I took photos of her.”

The interview, held on May 16, came after allegations from two further complainants were made.

Cummings has pleaded guilty to two of the three counts of stalking involving two complainants, but denies the nine remaining charges.

He has been suspended from his job in the Met’s central west command.

The trial continues.