Met Police launches new Couzens probe

THE Metropolitan Police are investigating whether Wayne Couzens committed more crimes before he kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard as the force vowed to make the streets safer for women and girls.

A senior officer admitted a vetting check on the former police officer was not done “correctly” when he joined the Met in 2018, while he was linked to an indecent exposure incident at a McDonald’s in Swanley, Kent, just 72 hours before Ms Everard was abducted in March.

The Met has said it will no longer deploy plain clothes officers on their own after the sentencing hearing was told Couzens had used lockdown rules to falsely arrest Ms Everard during the abduction. The force also promised to publish a new strategy for tackling violence against women and girls, outlining how it will prioritise action against sexual and violent predatory offenders.

Couzens, 48, was handed a whole life sentence at the Old Bailey on Thursday by Lord Justice Fulford, who said his “warped, selfish and brutal” offences had eroded confidence in the police. At a briefing at Scotland Yard, Assistant Met Commissioner Nick Ephgrave told reporters Couzens was not named in the Swanley incident but his car was reported to officers, who were said to have not yet completed the investigation.

He also said a vetting check was not carried out “correctly” on Couzens when he joined the force in 2018, linking him to another indecent exposure allegation in Kent in 2015.

The vetting did not flag up that a vehicle associated with Couzens had been identified in the Kent Police investigation. But Mr Ephgrave said that even if it had come up in the vetting process, it would not have changed the outcome because the investigation resulted in no further action and Couzens was never named as a suspect.

He added: “We ask anyone in the service or any member of the public that might have any information about Couzens’s behaviour – either as an officer or member of the public – that might be relevant, please come forward.”

Mr Ephgrave said the Met had been referred to the police watchdog over the Swanley incident and a file sent to the Crown Prosecution Service in relation to the alleged crime itself.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct is also investigating the conduct of five officers over allegations they sent discriminatory messages over WhatsApp. The Times reported the officers are alleged to have shared misogynistic, racist and homophobic material with Couzens months before he killed Ms Everard.

Met Deputy Commissioner Sir Stephen House told the London Assembly’s police and crime committee on Thursday that the actions of Couzens “constitute a gross betrayal of everything in policing that we believe in, everything that the Met stands for”, adding: “He was one of us and we need to look at ourselves very, very carefully to understand, (a) how was he allowed to be one of us, and what does it say about us as an organisation that he was?”