Wayne Cousins - report says he should never have been a police officer

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. This is what happens when standards are lowered, when interviewing techniques fail to get a real picture, when senior staff and colleagues ignore warning signs of vile behaviour, they too should take some of the blame for allowing this vile man to carry on with his perversions.

While we use words like grass, snitch, telltale, dobber, even whistle blower often said with a sneer, then decent and honest officers will be loathe to come forward.
When brave, decent and honest officers do come forward and as a result careers are halted at best, lost at worst then nothing will change.
There is a culture of bullying and resulting fear within the police service. This allows the likes of Couzens to operate in plain sight.
The murder of Sarah Everard was a heinous crime no matter who the perpetrator was but being committed by a serving police officer is chilling. This crime and far too many others reported since has brought the whole service in to disrepute.
When the public cannot put its trust in our police service we are in big trouble.

JaneJudge

Primrose I am not sure why you focussed on bent women during your post. We are all at a far more risk of violence from men.

Why do sexual offences not come up in vetting? This doesn’t happen with SOVA etc does it?

I didn’t. I mentioned a male DC too.

Although surely police work with SOVA

Primrose I am not sure why you focussed on bent women during your post. We are all at a far more risk of violence from men.

Why do sexual offences not come up in vetting? This doesn’t happen with SOVA etc does it?

^Heads should roll in the Wayne Couzens case*
They should ( and a lot of the them) but they won’t.
The powers that be will just kick the can down the road ‘till us ( the plebs) forget it.

It seems every week we read of people who are supposed to be protecting us from criminals being caught doing dangerous or stupid things at work. Just this week in our local paper there was the story of a Detective Constable losing his job after sending pictures of his bits to female police officers along with crude messages. Been doing it for ages.

There are always female prison officers taking drugs, phones etc into male prisoners and yesterday I read about a female Probation Officer doing the same.

Why are there so many bent people in positions of trust?

Heads should roll in the Wayne Couzens case.

This beautiful young woman made four 999 calls on the night her ex partner murdered her and her mother despite the fact that there was a non- molestation against the ex husband.
Not one officer responded 😡

From what I've read about the Met (and the police in general) he sounds over qualified for the job.

Every single week there is yet another article in the press about a police officer committing a sexual offence, sharing vile images and messages, behaving with misogyny that would look dated in the 1970's or filming dead victims.

Enough is enough.

Galaxy - yes 👍🏻

A bit of an aside but Woman’s Hour did a piece on porn today. The main listener/speaker had clearly been drawn into sexual activity her partner was excited by on porn. She agreed to anal sex, found it excruciating, he enjoyed it and wanted more. The risks to women and children from porn are clear (to me)
Evidently Cousins had images of child sexual abuse of children

I mentioned on the other thread, dangerous men dont just start with murder it's not how they operate. I think there is a wider question than vetting within the police is why the allegations werent followed up, he shouldnt have been on the streets let alone in the police.
Oh and a thousand years ago there was supposed to be an inquiry into the impact of porn, perhaps it might be a good idea for that to happen too.

I think he has had the sheer audacity to have appealed his sentence already.

Yes, I suspect this is only the beginning.

Jess Phillips is excellent on abuse of women and children. The issue of family court findings not being part of vetting procedures is terrifying.

MissAdventure

It wouldn't surprise me if even more comes out about Couzens.

Sadly, I agree!

It wouldn't surprise me if even more comes out about Couzens.

It’s ‘Couzens’ people.

Not was just the Met. - wasnt just the Met.

Publishing her findings earlier today, Lady Elish Angiolini, the inquiry chairwoman, warned without a radical overhaul of policing practices and culture, there is “nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight”.

Three different police forces “could and should” have stopped Couzens from getting a job as an officer, she said, as she identified a catalogue of failings in how he was recruited and vetted, and how allegations against him were investigated.

Beyond shocking isn’t it?

Proper, in depth vetting of applicants.
They are the very people we trust to help us.

It was just the Met who employed Cousins at least two or three others had him as a serving officer.

What really worries me is that the remarks by Lady Anglioni suggested that there is no reason to believe that there are not a number of Cousins serving in the police force, and that police behaviour of misogyny is endemic.

I wonder what the answer is?

Absolutely terrible.
All of it, and to think of the terror poor Sarah must have felt before her death.

A shocking indictment:

Jess Phillips MP: Rapists not flagged in vetting procedures
Labour MP Jess Phillips has told the Commons that convicted rapists are not currently flagged in police vetting procedures.

Addressing James Cleverly, she said:

“To say that we are doing everything possible in flagging intelligence is just not true.

Currently if you are found to have raped your wife or raped one of your children or abused your children, in a family court in this country, found by a British court, no police force in the country would be entitled to have that information when they were doing the vetting.

Will he commit today that that will all be completely and utterly available and that is somebody found to have raped or have child abused in a British court, that when they want to become a police officer or a social worker, that that information will be available.“

I agree! A total abysmal failure of vetting, of any force he’s worked in, his colleagues and his managers! Surely no one expects us to believe his peers “didn’t notice” his awful attitude and behaviour!

How on earth was he vetted and approved for the Met Police?
I believe ‘recruitment’ is outsourced to a private company but I may be wrong. Beggars belief he was only caught by bus and car hire CCTV.

Poor trusting Sarah Everard. She believed he was acting in his capacity as a policeman and so she got into the back seat of his car hire. Him in uniform. Why wouldn’t she do as she was asked? I can only imagine her terror that will have ensued on that drive along the roads with that rapist. She will have been petrified. Frantic. Her distraught parents have to live with that knowledge about their much loved girl every day for the rest of their lives. Mental anguish indeed.

RIP Sarah Everard.
The Met Police failed you abysmally.