Three years ago on 3rd March 2021 local Lambeth resident Sarah Everard was walking home from a friend’s house in Clapham.
Sarah was stopped by Wayne Couzens, an off-duty Metropolitan police officer who identified himself as a PC, handcuffed her and placed her in his car before kidnapping her and taking her to Kent where he raped and murdered her.
This dreadful crime by a serving police officer was the most serious breach of trust imaginable and it sent shock waves throughout South London and across the whole country.
Lady Elish Angiolini is chairing an independent inquiry into Sarah Everard’s murder and last week released the first part of her report into the horrendous death.
The report makes sobering reading, laying out how Wayne Couzens unacceptable behaviour could and should have been picked up on multiple occasions. Six years before he murdered Sarah Everard, Couzens had be reported to have engaged in indecent exposure. He did so again just a few days before the murder.
In total the report documents four occasions on which Kent Police and the Metropolitan Police bungled investigations, failed to prioritise crimes against women, and missed opportunities to stop him from committing further offences.
Lady Angiolini makes it clear that the police must have zero tolerance for indecent exposure, with a clear policy of investigating and tackling every report of sexual offences.
Far too many women have had the experience of reporting inappropriate behaviour by police officers, only to be told that it was ‘just a few bad apples’. We now know that there are many police officers who should never have passed the police recruitment tests, or whose unacceptable behaviour in post did not lead to them being immediately suspended.
In the Metropolitan Police alone, 687 police officers were accused of offences involving violence against women and girls in one 12 month period, but just 84 were suspended.
It is heartbreaking to know that Sarah Everard’s death could have been prevented. Women’s trust and confidence in policing will only be restored when the offences we report are taken seriously and investigated properly, and when we can be confident that there is a zero-tolerance approach to any officer who has committed an act of violence against women and girls.
Labour is clear that there must be a step change in the approach to the safety of women and girls.
We need new vetting rules for police officers, specialist rape and sexual offences units in every police force in the country, new legislation so that police respond with urgency to domestic abuse and save lives; and much stronger action on indecent exposure, a distressing offence which is known to be a gateway to more serious crimes, as it was for Wayne Couzens.
All our thoughts are with Sarah Everard’s family and friends on the anniversary of her death. We owe it to her memory to ensure that a serving police officer can never again commit such an atrocity, and that the trust and confidence of women in policing is rebuilt.