A former officer who botched an inquiry into Wayne Couzens hours earlier than he kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard has stated she has been made a scapegoat for the disaster engulfing the Metropolitan police.
Samantha Lee was discovered responsible of gross misconduct and barred from policing for all times by a disciplinary panel on Wednesday.
The 29-year-old stated the Met had thrown her below the bus reasonably than deal with the institutional and vetting failures that allowed Couzens to commit a collection of intercourse crimes earlier than murdering Everard. She stated the power wanted to answer sexual offences reviews extra rapidly and supply officers coaching on indecent publicity to stop future scandals.
“I believe it’s utterly unfair that this case has been placed on me when there was an opportunity to cease Couzens a lot earlier,” Lee stated. “They’ve thrown me below the bus so the Met can say ‘we’ve completed one thing now’ they usually’ll transfer on.”
Couzens, 50, was reported to police on 28 February 2021 after twice exposing himself to feminine workers at a drive-through McDonald’s in Kent. However there was a three-day delay in assigning Lee to the case due to the Met’s crime triaging course of which assessed the offence as low danger.
Lee carried out a “sloppy” investigation when she visited the restaurant at noon on 3 March, 9 hours earlier than Couzens kidnapped Everard, 33, in Clapham, south-west London. The panel concluded she lied when she claimed she had been informed there was no CCTV of Couzens’ automotive.
Lee has turn out to be the primary officer publicly taken to process over Couzens, who was first reported to Kent police for indecent publicity in June 2015. He escaped being recognized as a intercourse offender regardless of police having the registration of a automotive he had allegedly used to flash a pedestrian, in addition to his identify and deal with.
Lee stated: “Everybody’s simply coming down on me – ‘Oh, that is on you.’ But it surely’s not me that went to the McDonald’s 4 days later, that’s the triaging system that organises that. It’s not me that vetted Couzens and let him into the police within the first place when he’d already been recognized for [allegedly] committing that type of offence.
“Everybody’s dropping it down on me as a younger feminine PC, and [not] all the highest brass and males who’re increased up who’ve put the foundations in place for this to all occur because it did, relating to the appointments, and the precise insurance policies and the processes.”
Whereas below investigation for the failings, Lee arrange an OnlyFans account referred to as Officer Naughty and give up the power. She now earns as much as £7,000 a month posting pornographic movies and pictures on the location.
Lee maintains that she didn’t lie or know she was in command of the case till after Couzens’s arrest for homicide.
She stated the power wanted to streamline its techniques for monitoring instances, introduce laptop checks to search out out if a suspect was a police officer, and alter the way in which it triaged 999 calls. “I don’t assume an appointment needs to be made for sexual offences as a result of as everyone knows, typically, sexual offences escalate,” she stated. “This might have all been prevented I believe if somebody had been despatched out that day on the twenty eighth when the decision was initially made.”
She stated she had by no means obtained coaching on indecent publicity and had solely responded to a few instances in 5 years of frontline policing. “I believe they need to rent extra police and put extra time into coaching sexual offences, undoubtedly, as a result of I’ve had no enter ever on methods to take care of indecent publicity,” she stated.
She stated her lack of coaching meant she didn’t realise the significance of Couzens’s meal receipts and written statements from the McDonald’s witnesses, which she didn’t log. Lee described this failure as a “real mistake”, saying: “I want that I had completed a greater job.”
However Lee stated she didn’t really feel responsible as a result of even when she had performed a extra thorough investigation there wouldn’t have been grounds to arrest Couzens instantly. “I’ve gone over it so many occasions in my head, I can guarantee you, and there’s nothing that I may have completed that might have modified the horrendous consequence,” she stated.
“I do really feel like Sarah was let down by the police massively as a result of Couzens ought to by no means have been ready the place he was in a position to make use of who he was to do what he did. And I believe what Sarah’s household has gone by is totally terrible and I might not want that on anyone.”
Lee grew up in Bromley, south-east London, and was educated at residence after main faculty and obtained no GCSEs. She joined the Met as a constable in April 2016 after enterprise a Certificates in Information of Policing.
In July 2020 she transferred to an emergency response staff in Bromley the place Couzens had been primarily based till February that 12 months. Lee stated had the case been allotted to a unique officer they may have recognized him.
In actual fact, a chief superintendent who gave proof at Lee’s tribunal had performed Couzens’s exit interview in January 2020. Lee stated the officer’s assertion – which was not learn at her tribunal – included what she described as a “weird” nearly “character reference” for Couzens.
She claimed the officer described the interview through which Couzens spoke about eager to switch to a firearms unit, saying: “He didn’t come throughout to me as bizarre or a gun nut however was attention-grabbing, eager and engaged. I typically had good instincts round folks and he appeared like an amiable, attention-grabbing particular person.”
Lee stated: “I’m one of many solely those that didn’t know who he was, and I’m the one which’s been caught on for it.”
The Met’s deputy assistant commissioner Stuart Cundy stated: “The aim of the gross misconduct listening to was to not determine whether or not Wayne Couzens’s future offending may have been prevented … Essentially, I’m sorry that Couzens was not arrested earlier than he went on to homicide Sarah Everard and we proceed to think about her family members.”
