Sarah Everard's Murderer Pleads Guilty

[Sheilbh]

This was the case we discussed earlier because of the awfulness of a random kidnapping and the way the Met bravely stopped that women's vigil. The suspect was a police officer who has pleaded guilty - more concerningly there were potentially points when he could and should have been identified as a threat to women earlier, but wasn't and wider systemic issues of the police investigating their own:

Police could have identified Sarah Everard killer as sex offender in 2015
Serving officer Wayne Couzens is suspected of committing indecent exposure three times before murder
Vikram Dodd and Alexandra Topping
Fri 9 Jul 2021 22.23 BST

A major chance to identify PC Wayne Couzens as a sex offender while he served as a constable may have been missed by police six years before he abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard, the Guardian has learned.

The revelation comes after Couzens on Friday pleaded guilty to abducting Everard from a London street into a car in March, before murdering her.

Everard's murder and Couzens' subsequent arrest sparked a wave of anger and protests across the UK and provoked fierce debate about women's safety and failings in the criminal justice system.

Couzens, an armed officer in the Met's elite parliamentary and diplomatic protection group, was warned by the judge on Friday that his abuse of position meant he could face a whole life term at sentencing in September, meaning he would die in jail.

The Guardian now understands that in June 2015 Kent police received a report that a man had been spotted in Dover in a car naked from the waist down.

It is believed there may have been enough information recorded in the Kent police system to have identified the semi-naked man as being Couzens, who was a serving police officer at the time.

The disclosure comes as pressure grows on police to overhaul how they investigate crimes by their own officers. The incident in Kent is one of three times Couzens is now suspected of indecent exposure before his attack on Everard.

The 2015 incident is being investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. One significant line of investigation for the police watchdog is whether the car the complainant described matched the car Couzens had access to at the time.

There were sufficient details in the Kent police system to make the link to Couzens and the 2015 incident after he was charged with the attack on Everard. The alleged indecent exposure was referred to the IOPC in May 2021, two months after he murdered Everard.

In June 2015 Couzens was an armed officer with the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), who say they were never told of any concerns, and in 2018 Couzens joined the Metropolitan police and passed their vetting procedures.

Couzens is also accused of indecent exposure in two other instances at a McDonald's in south London three days before she was killed.

Tom Richards, assistant chief constable with Kent police, said: "In May 2021 Kent police made a referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct in relation to its investigation into an alleged indecent exposure in Dover, in June 2015.

"It was reported at the time that a man unknown to the complainant, who was also a man, had been spotted driving a car whilst naked from the waist down. No arrests were made."

Labour said the police must look at their vetting processes and safeguarding systems "to ensure this can never happen again", while women's groups called for an independent inquiry into police misconduct.

Privately, police leaders see Couzens and his offences as a one-off, and have not yet identified any broader issues or systems such as vetting that need urgent change. They will await the results of the IOPC investigations to see if reforms are needed.

As well as members of Everard's family, Dame Cressida Dick, the Met commissioner, was in court for her officer's guilty plea, and paid tribute to "a fantastic, talented young woman.

"All of us in the Met are sickened, angered and devastated by this man's crimes. They are dreadful. Everyone in policing feels betrayed," she said.

Harriet Wistrich, director of the Centre for Women's Justice, called for a full public inquiry into police failures and misconduct and the wider culture of misogyny after the murders of Everard and of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman last year.

"Women do not feel safe and it is incumbent on the government and all criminal justice agencies to now take action over the epidemic of male violence which is the other public health crisis of our day," she said.

Couzens abducted Everard on 3 March. That day he finished work at 7am then collected a rental car he had hired three days earlier. He drove around south London in the car before spotting Everard walking home after visiting a friend's home at about 9.30pm.

Footage from a passing bus captured the number plate of the white Vauxhall Astra used by Couzens. He had used two mobile phone numbers to hire it, one of which was a mobile number recorded on his Met police personnel file.

Everard's body was recovered from woodland near Ashford in Kent, about 20 miles west of Couzens' home, a week later. A postmortem showed she had died from compression of the neck.

After he was arrested at his home in Deal on 9 March, Couzens admitted taking Everard but initially denied her murder. He said his car was flashed by an eastern European gang and claimed they were threatening him and his family after he had underpaid for a sex worker the gang controlled and whom he had met at a Folkestone hotel weeks earlier.

Couzens was vetted when he first became a police officer with the CNC in 2011. He then transferred to serve in Dungeness, Kent. The Met said he was vetted again in 2018 when he joined the force.

Labour's shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, urged the police to look again at vetting processes and safeguarding systems. Jess Phillips, the shadow domestic violence minister, said the police had serious questions to answer.

"It's vitally important for the safety and security of our nation that women feel that they can come forward. This isn't just about women being confident, this is about getting perpetrators of sexual crimes and battery and murder off our streets."

Jess Leigh of Reclaim These Streets, which is locked in a legal battle with the Metropolitan police after it banned a vigil it organised for Everard, echoed the call for a judge-led inquiry into police conduct.

"It is very clear that the police have failed in their duty to keep people safe," she said. "I think public confidence in the Met is on the floor already and this continues to make it worse with the same groups of people that didn't trust them, including young women."

Deniz Uğur, deputy director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said the IOPC investigation was welcome but not enough, and called for "concrete actions, quickly, to help build trust and confidence by the public".

In March last year the Centre for Women's Justice launched a super-complaint, containing the experiences of 19 women with claims of rape, sexual assault and domestic abuse by ex-partners in the police force.

Almost 700 cases of alleged domestic abuse involving police officers and staff were reported during the three years to April 2018, according to freedom of information requests made by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The data, from three-quarters of forces, showed that police employees accused of domestic abuse were a third less likely to be convicted than the general public and less than a quarter of complaints resulted in disciplinary action.

The IOPC said 12 officers from several forces have so far been served with gross misconduct or misconduct notices regarding matters related to Couzens.

I'd add that I think there's also evidence of many terrorists (both far-right and extreme Islamist) having a history of domestic violence/abuse. It seems like a crime/allegation that we should be taking really seriously but the police aren't.

[The Brain]

There are limits to what you can do regarding people who go from almost zero to sixty in an instant. He was driving around in a car without pants on? Unless he had a see-through car that's a pretty mild case of indecent exposure compared to many others. And he wasn't even convicted?

My GUESS would be that the guy is a total creep and that interviews etc should have picked up on that. But having been accused of something once? Is all it takes to kill a cop career to accuse him? That's hardly ideal.

[Sheilbh]

I think that's fair but he was in highly vetted, sensitive police bodies and (I don't know if that's considered a promotion) but I think the three investigated allegations of indecent exposure probably should have been a factor on them and maybe raising a red flag. It also seems like he was escalating from the car incident to multiple in a very short space of time - and (according to the Sun) he had a reputation among colleagues as being a creep and was nicknamed (behind his back) "the rapist".

We don't know the details of that night but it seems like Everard got into his car willingly so I suspect he may have used his police warrant card to build trust.

But it's a bit like the trial in rape investigations of focusing on establishing if there's a pattern of behaviour with the accused rather than the "credibility" of the accuser. Three indecent exposure reports seems enough to think there's probably a pattern which the police as an employer - but one with a special duty to get public trust - should probably be looking into.

And I find the figures on investigations of domestic abuse by police officers really worrying.

[grumbler]

I don't believe that Couzens was a suspect in any indecent exposure crimes until after his murder arrest, so no amount of careful vetting would have revealed him to be the monster that he is.

The newspaper hypothesizes that a chance to arrest him "may have been missed by police" six years earlier, because "it is believed there may have been enough information," which is about as nothingburger as a report can get while still being at least tangentially related to the truth.

The "driving without pants" episode as reported makes no sense, as The Brain points out.  How could someone outside the car even know the driver had no pants on?  The fact that Couzens may (or may not) have had access to a car similar to the one being driven pantless doesn't provide a vetting board with anything they can use.

I think the fact that his fellow police seem to have had their doubts about him, but did nothing, is the more telling part of the story.

[Razgovory]

The "driving without pants" episode as reported makes no sense, as The Brain points out.  How could someone outside the car even know the driver had no pants on? 

Easy.  First the driver drives through a flooded roadway and gets stuck.  When the fireman pull the motorist out of the car the world can see that the driver has no pants.  Then a second emergency vehicle rams into the firetruck and everyone needs rescuing.  What a night that was!

[garbon]

Presumably if he was in a car and someone was in a vehicle that was higher up?

[Admiral Yi]

It would be helpful to know why other cops called him the rapist.