'Officer Naughty' guilty of gross misconduct over Wayne Couzens blunders
A former Metropolitan Police officer accused of bungling an investigation into two offences of indecent exposure by Wayne Couzens has been found guilty of gross misconduct.
Samantha Lee, who left the Metropolitan Police in 2022 after bosses discovered she had posted inappropriate images online and had set up an Only Fans account called Officer Naughty, was found to have lied about her failings over the Couzens investigation.
A police disciplinary hearing heard that Ms Lee had failed to make the "the correct investigative inquiries" over two incidents when Couzens exposed himself to female members of staff at a McDonald's restaurant in Swanley, Kent, on Feb 14 and Feb 27 2021.
The officer attended the restaurant on March 3 and interviewed the manager Sam Taylor, about the offences. Just hours later, Couzens, a serving Met officer, abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard as she walked home from a friend’s house in Clapham, south-west London.
Ms Lee was accused of failing to gather crucial CCTV evidence, before lying about it and claiming she believed the evidence had been deleted.
Darren Snow, the panel chairman, found that this dishonesty amounted to gross misconduct, and that had Ms Lee still been a serving officer, she would have been dismissed from the force.
In his evidence, Mr Taylor said that he had shown Ms Lee the relevant CCTV footage and told her it could be downloaded. He also explained that he told her Couzens's registration plate could be seen in the CCTV footage of the second incident.
Handing down the panel's findings, Mr Snow said they had found Mr Taylor to be a "credible" witness.
He added: "We find it inconceivable that he would not have shown her the CCTV evidence."
Instead, the panel found that Ms Lee had been driven to dishonesty by the "pressure" of the investigation.
"We have some understanding of this situation, a relatively straightforward exposure became an issue of immense pressure," he said.
‘Rushed the job’
Lawyers representing the Metropolitan Police claimed Ms Lee had "rushed the job” and then lied about it “when she realised the stakes had escalated astronomically”.
The hearing was told Mr Taylor had made a 999 call on Feb 28 telling police call handlers that a man had twice exposed himself to female staff. He provided details of the car registration and the credit card used by Couzens.
The operator ran checks against the Police National Computer (PNC) and confirmed that the registered keeper of the suspect black Seat Exeo was Couzens, who lived at an address in Kent.
Unfortunately, the system is not designed to confirm whether suspects are serving police officers, the hearing was told. The report was “triaged as less urgent than other matters the Met Police had to deal with and so it was booked for an appointment some days later”.
When Ms Lee came on shift on Mar 3, she was told to make a one-hour visit to the McDonald’s restaurant between midday and 1pm. But it was the last appointment of the day and she only spent 15 to 20 minutes there before returning to her police station.
Once back at the station, she filled out a report stating: “This needs to be further looked into and the suspect will need to be arrested for indecent exposure.”
‘Low-grade allegation’
The hearing was told that the standard of Ms Lee’s investigation was “extremely poor, treating the matter as a low-grade allegation that could be dealt with by her cursorily, deliberately leaving to others what she should have done herself.”
In her evidence, Ms Lee admitted that she made some errors but said nothing she could have done "would have changed the tragic outcome" of what happened to Everard later that day.
"I accept that I could have done more around CCTV and evidence gathering, that was errors on my part and I accept that," she said. "And as much as I have thought it over and over, I don't believe that anything I could have done would have changed the tragic outcome of what happened later that day."
In March this year, Couzens was sentenced to 19 months in prison after admitting three counts of indecent exposure. The third indecent exposure incident related to when Couzens exposed himself to a female cyclist on a Kent country lane in November 2020.
He was already serving life behind bars for kidnapping Everard as she walked home through Clapham on March 3 2021 and then murdering her.
