Police should never have employed Wayne Couzens, report finds

Sarah Everard’s family have said she was kidnapped and murdered by Wayne Couzens because he was armed with police powers he should never have had, after an official report revealed new and damning failures by police who missed his prolific sexual offending dating back almost 20 years.

The failures laid out in the report by Lady Elish Angiolini are worse than previously thought, and she concludes Couzens should never have been a police officer. She highlighted a series of chances to spot his danger to women and his unsuitability to be an officer that were missed by repeated bungling in three forces.

He was a Metropolitan police officer and entrusted with a gun as part of the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command.

Couzens took Everard, 33, from a London street in March 2021 during Covid restrictions. He used his police warrant card and police powers to convince her to get into the back of his car.

He then raped and murdered her, leaving her remains scattered across the Kent countryside, and is serving a whole-life term in prison.

The inquiry was ordered by the government and the report published on Thursday finds policing culpable for leaving Couzens at large.

The report damns police culture, finding Couzens showed colleagues extreme porn; was the subject of reports to police for indecent exposure, with investigations being bungled by Kent police in 2015 and the Met in 2021; and that routine checks that could have flagged his unsuitability to be an officer were not done.

It also finds “red flags” were ignored, such as reports of Couzens indecently exposing himself in 2015, 2020 and 2021 – days before the murder – and being in debt even before he joined the police.

In a statement, Everard’s parents, Sue and Jeremy, and siblings, Katie and James, criticised the police and told how her loss haunted every part of their lives.

“It is obvious that Wayne Couzens should never have been a police officer. Whilst holding a position of trust, in reality he was a serial sex offender.

“Warning signs were overlooked throughout his career and opportunities to confront him were missed.

“We believe that Sarah died because he was a police officer – she would never have got into a stranger’s car.”

In 1995 Couzens is alleged to have attempted a knife-point kidnapping in north London. The report says a woman claims Couzens raped her in 2006 while he was a special constable with Kent police, and that he raped a woman in October 2019 while he was an officer with the Met. He is also alleged to have tried to sexually assault a man dressed in drag in a Kent bar in summer 2019, during which he used his status as a police officer to silence the man’s complaints.

The report says Couzens was alleged to have had indecent images of children and is also alleged to have attacked a child.

Some of the allegations the inquiry highlights were not reported to police before Couzens went hunting for a woman on London’s streets in March 2021, but in all, eight allegations were passed to officers, with next to nothing done.

Couzens first applied to join Kent police in 2004. He failed the vetting process but was later allowed to serve as a special constable with the same powers.

The report finds he should never have been hired as a police officer in the first instance. He was employed by the Civil Nuclear constabulary despite being in debt, which the vetting rules in 2011 said should be a bar to being hired.

In 2018 he applied to join the Met, which missed material on the police national database linking his car to an allegation of indecent exposure in Kent in 2015.

In 2019 the Met bungled another vetting check by missing his potential sexual offending, and gave him a gun.

Angiolini concluded: “Repeated failures in recruitment and vetting meant that Couzens could enjoy the powers and privileges that accompany the role of a police officer.

“He went on to use his knowledge of police powers to falsely arrest Sarah Everard.”

After his crimes came to light, some police chiefs said privately they regarded Couzens as an aberration. Angiolini uncovered wider failings, and a continued failure to grasp the scale of the errors.

The inquiry chair said: “Even after Couzens’ arrest and a review of his vetting clearance, the Met told the inquiry in 2022 that they would still have recruited him if provided with the same information. I found this astonishing.

Angiolini demanded an overhaul of police vetting, and noted that this call, along with some of her other 16 recommendations, were addressing failings that forces had already been told to rectify by previous official reports, but had failed to do so.

She said police must take indecent exposure more seriously, amid claims it can be a gateway offence for more serious attacks.

In their statement, the Everard family said: “It is almost three years now since Sarah died. We no longer wait for her call; we no longer expect to see her. We know she won’t be there at family gatherings.

“But the desperate longing to have her with us remains and the loss of Sarah pervades every part of our lives.”

Angiolini said: “It is time for all those with responsibility for policing to do everything they can to improve standards of recruitment, vetting and investigation.

“Wayne Couzens was never fit to be a police officer. Police leaders need to be sure there isn’t another Couzens operating in plain sight.”

The chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, chief constable Gavin Stephens, said: “Wayne Couzens should never have been a police officer. His offending should have been stopped sooner. This should never have happened.

“Listening this morning to Lady Elish Angiolini’s clear findings of a catalogue of missed opportunities and red flags left me aghast. Police leaders across the United Kingdom will feel the same and take this as an urgent call for action, and reminder of how far we still have to go.”

The Met commissioner, Mark Rowley, said: “The fact that he abused his position as a Metropolitan police officer to carry them out represents the most appalling betrayal of trust. It damages the relationship between the public and the police and exposes longstanding fundamental flaws in the way we decide who is fit to be a police officer and the way we pursue those who corrupt our integrity once they get in.”

Rowley, who took office vowing to make radical changes to the scandal-hit Met, added: “Regardless of our significant progress over the past year, the scale of the change that is needed inevitably means it will take time and it is not yet complete.”

In a statement, the home secretary, James Cleverly, claimed the government had taken vigorous action: “Sarah was failed in more ways than one by the people who were meant to keep her safe, and it laid bare wider issues in policing and society that need to be urgently fixed.

“In the three years since, a root and stem cleanup of the policing workforce has been under way and we have made huge strides – as well as making tackling violence against women and girls a national policing priority to be treated on par with terrorism.”