The monstrous crimes committed against Sarah Everard – rape, murder, kidnap, false arrest and deception by a serving metropolitan police officer – finally exposed a culture of abuse of power within our policing system.
This was a landmark case which broke public trust in policing and tattered the force’s reputation, which will now have to rebuild slowly. Before this happens, one non-negotiable outcome of the inquiry into Sarah’s murder, which today James Cleverly has announced, is the development of an automated national vetting process.
This clearly did not exist 3 years ago to stop Sarah’s killer in his tracks, even when he committed prior offences against women, which were reported but not punished and could have indicated the more serious crimes which Wayne Couzons went on to commit.
A mass, automated, biometric system, to match records and histories of previous offences together, has to result from this public inquiry. The system will ensure anyone considering joining the UK police system has to undergo proper scrutiny and due diligence checks to assess their suitability.
The system will not just help to identify and then remove or prevent “rogue” officers from joining a police force because the problem is systematic across policing. There are hundreds or more currently serving or former police officers that should not have been accepted into the force if proper vetting procedures were taken seriously and past offences or the wrong behaviours, personality traits and motives to join policing were detected.
A system should provide a lifetime biometric data record after someone, including a police officer, is arrested, so their identity can be matched if they offend again.
The home secretary has revealed his plans to replicate a system that was launched for airport security staff checks last year.
