Killer cop Wayne Cozens joined Met when ‘THIRD of officers were not properly vetted’
MONSTER cop Wayne Couzens joined the Met Police when a third of officers weren’t properly vetted, according to reports.
The murderer, who dragged Sarah Everard off the street before raping and strangling her, is believed to have joined the force at a time when some new PCs weren’t checked at all.
The revelation by Sir Tom Winsor, Chief Inspector of Constabulary, will pile further pressure on Met Commissioner Cressida Dick.
She has refused to stand down after Couzens used his warrant card to snatch Sarah during the Covid lockdown.
Sir Tom told MPs today that in 2018/19, 37 per cent of the London force’s staff didn’t have up-to-date security vetting, the Telegraph reports.
The report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary found that 33 per cent of officers, an astonishing 72 per cent of police community support officers and 45 per cent of staff also did not hold proper checks.
And he warned the Commons that “too many forces had too many people working in them who did not have the correct vetting”.
In total, 14,616 members of the Met weren’t checked properly during that period.
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Couzens joined the force in September 2018.
Sir Tom is conducting an inspection for the Home Secretary into the Met’s processes when staff are hired.
A second probe will look at how the force tackles corruption.
And he said the police are hiring so rapidly that it could result in the “wrong people” becoming cops.
So far, 11,053 people have been hired under the Government’s pledge to take on 20,000 new officers by 2023.
QUESTIONS FOR MET
But Sir Tom said “going that fast carries risk” – and misogynists, racists, homophobes and even undercover members of crime gangs could have been hired.
Couzens, who has launched a sick bid to overturn his whole-life sentence for Sarah’s murder, was known as ‘The Rapist’ by officers during his career.
He also had a reputation for “drug abuse and extreme pornography”.
He was £29,000 in debt – a fact not picked up by vetting or reported by his fellow officers.
Sir Tom told MPs he knew of one incident where two police officers picked up a vulnerable woman in her 20s after she was assaulted.
MONSTER COP’S APPEAL
Instead of taking her to hospital, they drove her home and raped her – before bragging about it at work, he said.
Despite openly talking about it, nothing was done until a female inspector learned of the crime.
The men have now been convicted, Sir Tom said.
However, he asked: “What happened to the police officers, who I believe were all men in the locker room, who heard about this and did nothing?
“And the answer is nothing.”
Timeline to murder
Between 2011 and 2018, Couzens was known as ‘the rapist’ by his colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary.
No action was taken, despite it being well-known that he “gave women the creeps”.
During the same timeframe, it was an open secret that he was a drug user who enjoyed extreme pornography
In June 2015, he was identified as a suspect after exposing himself from the waist down while driving around Dover in Kent.
He was not arrested.
And in 2018, he walked into a job with the Met Police, despite being identified as a suspect in relation to that incident.
In February 2020 he was accepted into the Met’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Unit.
A year later, cursory checks on his finances would have revealed he was in £29,000 of debt and using payday loans to get by.
On February 18 this year, police received reports that Couzens had exposed himself at a McDonald’s.
There was CCTV of his car parked outside the restaurant, but he was not arrested.
On March 3, he showed Sarah Everard his warrant card and abducted her off the street before driving her 80 miles to Kent and murdering her.
On that date, police hadn’t yet identified him in connection with the flashing at McDonald’s, despite his registration plate featuring prominently in CCTV video.