Three Met Police officers charged with sharing ‘grossly offensive’ messages with Wayne Couzens
Three Met Police officers are charged with sharing ‘grossly offensive’ racist and misogynistic Whatsapp messages with Sarah Everard’s rapist and killer PC Wayne Couzens
Ex-PC Wayne Couzens was handed a rare whole-life term last SeptemberHe kidnapped, raped and murdered 33-year-old Ms Everard in MarchCouzens flashed women on a number of occasions before he committed murder
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Two serving Met Police officers and one former PC have been charged with sharing ‘grossly offensive’ messages with Sarah Everard‘s murderer and rapist Wayne Couzens on WhatsApp.
The three officers allegedly passed around racist and misogynistic messages with him before he committed his appalling crimes.
Investigators from the Independent Office for Police Conduct had been originally probing five officers from three forces.
It was also looking at one former officer over the WhatsApps, which were sent over eight months from March 2019, before Couzens joined the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command as a firearms officer in Feb 2020
The police watchdog only became aware of the conversations after seizing one of Couzens’ old phones after he was arrested over Ms Everard.
Wayne Couzens in Folkestone when he worked for Kent Police before the Metropolitan force
An IOPC spokesman said: ‘Two serving Metropolitan Police Service officers and one former MPS officer are to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on March 16 charged in connection with an Independent Office for Police Conduct investigation into the sending and sharing of inappropriate messages on WhatsApp.
‘They are charged with sending grossly offensive messages on a public communications network contrary to section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. The offences are alleged to have occurred between April and August 2019.
‘The IOPC’s investigation began following a referral from the MPS in April last year and was completed in December when we referred a file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS has now taken the decision to authorise charges against the officers.’
The investigation had also looked at another Met officer, one from Norfolk Constabulary and another from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary where Couzens had previously worked.
Sarah Everard, 33, was kidnapped, raped and murdered by Couzens in March last year
Couzens abducted Sarah Everard as she walked home from a friend’s house in Clapham, south London, on the evening of March 3, abusing his position as a police officer to force her into his car
Two of the officers are currently working on restricted duties, but none have been suspended.
Rosemary Ainslie, head of the CPS Special Crime Division, said: ‘Following a referral of evidence by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, the CPS has authorised charges against two serving Metropolitan Police officers and one former officer.
‘All three will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 16 March for their first hearing.
‘Each of the three defendants has been charged with sending grossly offensive messages on a public communications network. The alleged offences took place on a WhatsApp group chat.
‘The function of the CPS is not to decide whether a person is guilty of a criminal offence, but to make fair, independent and objective assessments about whether it is appropriate to present charges to a court to consider.
‘Criminal proceedings are active and nothing should be published that could jeopardise the defendants right to a fair trial.’
Last year a Metropolitan Police officer kept his job after allegedly sharing a fake highway code-style meme about luring a woman into woods and killing her during the search for Sarah Everard.
The probationary constable was among five officers from four forces who are facing misconduct proceedings over messages shared on social media about the Everard case.
The Met constable, who went on to staff a cordon as part of the search for Ms Everard, was investigated over the allegations they used WhatsApp ‘to share with colleagues an inappropriate graphic, depicting violence against women’ while off-duty.
Couzens used Covid powers to conduct a fake arrest of marketing executive Ms Everard as she walked home from a friend’s house in March last year, in a crime that appalled the nation and undermined confidence in the police.
He is now serving a whole-life order in prison, meaning he will never be released from jail.
The Met has faced a wave of criticism over missed opportunities to expose Couzens as a sexual predator before he went on to murder Miss Everard.
It emerged the 48-year-old was known as ‘the rapist’ by staff at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary because he made female colleagues feel so uncomfortable.
He had been accused of indecent exposure in Kent in 2015 and in London in the days before Ms Everard’s murder, but was allowed to continue working.
An ongoing inquiry investigating how he was able to abduct, rape and murder Sarah Everard will look at whether any ‘red flags were missed’ earlier in his career.
Home Secretary Priti Patel published the terms of reference for the first phase of the Angiolini Inquiry, named after Dame Elish Angiolini QC who is leading it, which will consider the ‘systemic failures’ that allowed Miss Everard’s killer to be employed as a police officer.
Ms Patel said: ‘I am determined to understand the failings that enabled a serving officer to commit such heinous crimes – we owe an explanation to Sarah’s family and loved ones, and we need to do all in our power to prevent something like this from ever happening again.’
