Sarah Everard died because her killer Wayne Couzens was a police officer who abused a position of trust he should never have been given, her devastated family said yesterday.
They spoke out as a shocking report revealed police missed countless opportunities to stop the monster who spent more than 20 years attacking women and children before carrying out the 2021 murder which shocked the nation.
Yesterday the chairman of an inquiry into his vile crimes, ahead of this weekend’s third anniversary of the crime, concluded there could be other predators lurking undetected in the ranks of British police.
Despite police chiefs promising reforms to root out criminals in uniform, Lady Elish Angiolini said there was ‘nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight’.
In what has been described ‘as one of the darkest episodes in British policing’, it emerged that the 51-year-old Scotland Yard officer who abducted, raped and murdered the 33-year-old marketing executive should have been blocked from joining the police under vetting rules which prevent the recruitment of officers vulnerable to corruption due to serious debt or insolvency.
Wayne Couzens spent more than 20 years attacking women and children before killing Sarah Everard in 2021
The 51-year-old Scotland Yard officer abducted, raped and murdered the 33-year-old marketing executive
But the chairman of an inquiry into Couzens’s crimes has said there is nothing to stop another criminal in uniform operating in ‘plain sight’
But a series of vetting blunders allowed him to slip through the net.
Couzens was reported to police eight times for indecent exposure before the murder on March 3, 2021, yet ‘lethargic’ colleagues missed his escalating ‘trajectory of sexually motivated behaviour and offending’ because they were ‘disinterested’ in investigating.
Lady Elish said she believed Ms Everard would be alive today if police had done their jobs properly, describing the ‘lamentable failure’ of officers who displayed ‘apathy and disinterest and found reasons not to pursue the cases’.
She questioned ‘whether there exists a deep-rooted culture in policing in which finding reasons not to pursue a crime is preferred over any attempt to build a successful case for prosecution’.
In a hard-hitting 343-page inquiry, she revealed new evidence that Couzens is suspected of a raft of attacks including multiple rapes, the serious sexual assault of a child and an attempted knifepoint kidnapping of a woman as far back as 1995.
Eight years before the murder, Couzens is believed to have spent a night scouting for a victim in 2013 and later started carrying his police handcuffs, baton and pepper spray to go off-duty on ‘hunting trips’ around London, Lady Elish said. The inquiry concluded that the evidence uncovered about Couzens’ crimes was just ‘the tip of the iceberg’.
Yet despite scores of new victims coming forward, Couzens will not face any further prosecutions due to ‘evidential difficulties’. Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said police had done everything they could with the evidence they had.
Pictured: Floral tributes left to honour Sarah Everard at the bandstand on Clapham Common
Couzens used his status as a police officer to trick Ms Everard into thinking he could arrest her for breaking lockdown rules during the pandemic
Last night national police leaders apologised to Ms Everard’s family as they conceded that Couzens should never have been in uniform, using his position to lure his victim as she walked home from a friend’s house.
Couzens – who will never be released from prison – used his status as a police officer to trick Ms Everard into thinking he could arrest her for breaking lockdown rules in place during the Covid pandemic.
But had he been investigated properly for indecent exposures reported as early as 2015, Couzens would have been kicked out of policing years earlier. Lady Elish wants an urgent review of indecent exposure cases, saying reports of the crime needed to be taken seriously. She said it was ‘astonishing’ that even after Couzens’ arrest, the Met said it would still have recruited him under its vetting rules.
College of Policing boss Andy Marsh said he could not guarantee there weren’t other sex offenders in policing.
Rishi Sunak said: This was a chilling, abominable crime that shook the country to its very core. I am sickened by the details that have come to light today and the police must urgently make changes to earn that trust back. No woman should ever feel unsafe on our streets.’
