Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
‘He should never have been an officer’
Sarah Everard’s killer Wayne Couzens should never have been given a job as a police officer and chances to stop the sexual predator were repeatedly ignored and missed, an inquiry has found.
Police – including Kent’s force – “failed” to spot warning signs about his “unsuitability for office”, a damning report concluded amid fears many more women and girls could have been victims of Couzens. Publishing her findings last week, inquiry chairwoman Lady Elish Angiolini warned without a radical overhaul of policing practices and culture, there is “nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight”.
Three different police forces “could and should” have stopped Couzens, from Deal, from getting a job as an officer, she said, as she identified a catalogue of failings in how he was recruited and vetted, and how allegations against him were investigated.
Miss Everard’s family said in response they believe the 33year-old marketing executive died because Couzens was a police officer, adding: “She would never have got into a stranger’s car.”
The inquiry laid bare a history of alleged sexual offending dating back nearly 20 years
before the off-duty armed Metropolitan Police officer abducted Miss Everard from London in March 2021, before bringing her to Dover, raping and murdering her. According to the report, over the last two years the inquiry uncovered evidence Couzens was accused of a string of other incidents of sexual abuse, including a “very serious sexual assault of a child barely into her teens”.
The findings identified at least five incidents which were not reported to police, with Lady Elish saying she believes there could be more victims. Setting out a raft of recommendations to “make sure
something like this can never happen again”, Lady Elish said: “Wayne Couzens should never have been a police officer.
“And, without a significant overhaul, there is nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight. Now is the time for change.” Among the measures, Lady Elish called for an urgent review of indecent exposure charges against serving officers and said reports of the crime need to be taken seriously.
Miss Everard’s mother Sue, father Jeremy, sister Katie and brother James said in a statement: “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.” Couzens – who will never be released from prison – used his status as a police officer to trick Miss Everard into thinking he could arrest her for breaking lockdown rules in place during the pandemic.
After the harrowing killing, it emerged there had been concerns about Couzens’s behaviour while he was a police officer, with reports he was
nicknamed “the rapist”. He was a special constable with Kent Police from 2006 to 2010, became an officer with the Civil Nuclear Constabulary in 2011, and then moved to the Met in 2018.
Couzens indecently exposed himself three times before the murder, including twice at a drive-through fast-food restaurant in Kent in the days prior to the killing. He was not caught despite driving his own car and using his own credit card at the time.
The report highlights how failures in investigations into allegations of indecent exposure meant real opportunities to disrupt Couzens’ offending and bring his policing career to a halt were missed.
It adds Kent Police failed to investigate two reports of indecent exposure, including an incident in 2015, long before Miss Everard’s rape, abduction and murder, missing opportunities to bring him to justice. Lady Elish described these failures by Kent Police as “grave errors” and “a very obvious red flag”. Then-met police constable Samantha Lee was sacked and barred from being a police officer after it was found she had not properly investigated the incidents. Responding to the report findings, a Kent Police spokesman said: “Everyone at Kent Police is shocked, appalled and disgusted by the crimes Wayne Couzens committed against Sarah Everard and we share in the collective grief for her loss. “Part one of the Angiolini Inquiry report has been made available to us today, and whilst we continue to carefully consider its contents we fully accept the recommendations made of Kent Police.
“We also accept our investigation into a 2015 incident of indecent exposure was flawed due to it being allocated to an officer who was not a trained investigator, and apologise for this failing.”