Police ‘still hiring predators’ years after Everard murder

Predators like Wayne Couzens are still entering police forces more than four years after the serving officer raped and murdered Sarah Everard, The Independent can reveal.

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN CRIME CORRESPONDENT

Lady Elish Angiolini has warned that police forces in England and Wales have still not barred men with criminal convictions or cautions for sexual offences from applying to join.

She said it was “shocking” that her recommendations to drastically tighten police vetting, issued in February last year, have still not been fully implemented.

In the second phase of an inquiry launched in the wake of the horrifying crime which sparked national debate about police standards and women’s safety, Lady Elish said “countless other women” have been targeted by men since the marketing executive, 33, was abducted and killed by Couzens, a Metropolitan Police officer, in 2021.

In her latest report, she warned that predators “continue to roam freely” as women live in fear in public spaces, and she slammed “critical failures” in recording basic data about attacks.

Everard’s heartbroken mother, Susan Everard, revealed she continues to “rage” against her death and the report “shows how much work there is to do in preventing sexually motivated crimes against women”.

“I go through a turmoil of emotions - sadness, rage, panic, guilt and numbness,” she said. “They used to come all in one day, but as time goes by, they are more widely spaced and, to some extent, time blunts the edges. I am not yet at the point where happy memories of Sarah come to the fore. When I think of her, I can’t get past the horror of her last hours. I am still tormented by the thought of what she endured.” Laying out her findings yesterday, Lady Elish said: “Women change their travel plans, their routines, and their lives out of fears for their safety in public, while far too many perpetrators continue to roam freely. Women deserve to feel safer. They deserve to be safer.”