Wayne Couzens 'slapped female officer's bottom' in Bromley

Wayne Couzens, 48, was handed a whole life order for the “grotesque” killing of the 33-year-old marketing executive, which shocked and outraged the nation.

Three years ago, he began his Met career working as part of a response team in Bromley, not long after which he reportedly sexually assaulted a female officer.

A source told The Sun on Sunday: “Everyone at the station said he was a right oddball and there were complaints about him but nothing was done.

Wayne Couzens

“There was a female officer at Bromley and he had just booked someone in the custody suite and he walked past and slapped her bottom.

“It was right out of the blue and he tried to make a joke out of it.

“She wasn’t having it and complained to superiors but nothing appeared to have been done.

“The incident would have been logged. You would have thought alarm bells would ring when he applied for a firearms post and these things would have flagged up. 

“But they obviously didn’t log it or maybe someone wasn’t doing their job properly.”

Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Tom Winsor today confirmed Couzens was also known as “the rapist” by other officers at times during his career.

He allegedly had a reputation “in terms of drug abuse, extreme pornography and other offences of this kind”, Sir Tom said.

He also warned that police officers are failing to raise concerns about colleagues who exhibit “damaging or worrying” characteristics, amid a "culture of protection".

In 2015, when he was worked as a mechanic, Kent Police also allegedly failed to investigate an indecent exposure incident linked to Couzens, when he was spotted driving naked from the waist down in Dover.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct is investigating what police officers knew about him.

Couzens moved to a role as parliamentary and diplomatic protection command in February 2020, patrolling diplomatic premises, mainly embassies.

He clocked off from a 12-hour shift at the American embassy before using his Metropolitan Police-issue warrant card and handcuffs to snatch Ms Everard as she walked home from a friend’s house in Clapham, on the evening of March 3.

He then drove to a secluded rural area near Dover in Kent, where he parked up and raped Ms Everard, before strangling her to death with a police issue belt.

Married Couzens then burned her body in a refrigerator in an area of woodland he owned in Hoads Wood, near Ashford, before dumping the remains in a nearby pond.

He was arrested at his home in Deal, Kent, after police connected him to a hire car he used to abduct Ms Everard, whose remains were found by police dogs on March 10.

On Wednesday, Ms Everard’s parents Jeremy and Susan and sister Katie asked Couzens to look at them, condemning him as a “monster” as he sat quaking in the dock with his head bowed.

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