Wayne Couzens escaped being identified as a sex offender six years before he murdered Sarah Everard, despite police having the registration of a car he had allegedly used to flash passersby, as well as his name and address, an official report has revealed.
The full extent of Kent police’s bungling of their investigation, which could have caught Couzens, can only now be reported for the first time.
A car registered to Couzens, driving through Dover in 2015, was reported to Kent police, with witnesses saying a man inside was naked from the waist down.
In June 2015 Couzens was an armed officer with the Civil Nuclear constabulary (CNC), which said it was never told of any concerns about him. He had previously worked as a special constable for Kent police, which bungled the investigation into him.
In 2018 Couzens joined the Metropolitan police after passing their vetting procedures. in March 2021 he kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard after plucking her off a south London street.
It was already known that the Met had missed opportunities to identify Couzens as a risk to women just days before the attack on Everard. But the fact that the danger he posed could have been known six years earlier makes the police failings even starker and wider than the Met.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct investigated, leading to a Kent police sergeant, known as X, facing a misconduct hearing. He was cleared of misconduct and continues to serve, but was found to have breached standards for duties and responsibilities. He will undergo “reflective practice”, as well as training to boost his investigative skills, which Kent police said “is not a formal disciplinary outcome”.
A report released on Tuesday by the IOPC said that at 8.24pm on Tuesday 9 June 2015, a man who had been driving with his partner called police to report that moments earlier a man driving past them on London Road, Dover, was naked from the waist down and his penis was “sticking up in the car”.
He gave police the car’s make, model, colour and registration, all of which proved to be correct. By 8.36pm police knew the vehicle was registered to a Mr Wayne Couzens, and had his address.
A radio message with details of the car and Couzens’ name was issued to officers on duty. At the time, Couzens’ brother worked for Kent police but was not on duty.
Later, police were told that the witness may not be “wholly reliable”. He missed an appointment the next day to meet police and had issues with substance abuse.
Other checks confirmed that the vehicle linked to the indecent exposure in Dover had been in the area at the time of the alleged offence, as the witness had said, and a camera showed the occupant.
Nine days later, X expressed doubts about the witnesses’s accuracy and looked at his criminal record. The sergeant also accessed Kent police records for Couzens, which gave his personal details. The file on Couzens contained pages revealing his past service as a special constable with Kent, but the IOPC said it was not clear whether X had read this.
Later that day, 18 June 2015, the sergeant concluded that the witness did not support the police investigation, and “stated the named suspect had not been identified”, the IOPC report said.
The sergeant declared “the crime was not detectable and there were no outstanding reasonable lines of inquiry”. Couzens had not been spoken to, let alone arrested.
He closed the inquiry with one reason being the “offender was unknown”, and without carrying out further inquiries into CCTV or witnesses.
Couzens was not recorded as a potential suspect on the crime report.
The IOPC said: “PS [police sergeant] X’s alleged failure to obtain more details from Wayne Couzens and input on the crime report led to the crime report not being linked to Wayne Couzens in any meaningful way on the Police National Database. This could have had implications in relation to Wayne Couzens’ vetting to join the MPS. Although this would have been unknown to PS X, it is relevant to consider in terms of the harm caused by his actions.”
The IOPC called for a new national system so that any criminal allegations against serving police officers are known to forces in England and Wales.
Amanda Rowe of the IOPC said the change may not have stopped Couzens – because of other shortcomings – but might catch other dangerous officers in the future. “Our investigations … highlighted there is no system in place to alert forces when a police officer becomes a crime suspect,” she said.
Couzens earlier this year admitted a series of indecent exposure offences, with his criminality escalating to the extent that in March 2021 he went hunting for a young woman and found Sarah Everard.
