Metropolitan Police officer dismissed for accessing Wayne Couzens custody records

A Metropolitan Police officer has been sacked for searching force databases to uncover the identity of Sarah Everard’s murderer shortly after he was detained.

A tribunal concluded that former police constable Clare Tett lacked any "proper policing purpose" when she looked at Wayne Couzens’ custody file the day following his arrest on suspicion of kidnap.

Having no connection to the inquiry into Ms Everard’s disappearance, the former officer was instead "motivated by curiosity", the panel established.

Following a misconduct hearing in October, Ms Tett was found to have committed gross misconduct and was dismissed without notice. She is one of several personnel flagged for inappropriately accessing material connected to the investigation.

Ms Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, was reported missing on 4 March 2021, with Couzens arrested five days later. His identity was not made public until 12 March.

However, on 10 March, Ms Tett used internal computer systems to view custody files for Couzens and his wife, alongside the crime report information system record for Ms Everard.

She was also found to have checked files for four other suspects held over serious offences, including murder and blackmail.

The officer, who was attached to the south west borough command unit criminal justice team, was not involved in the investigation into Ms Everard’s disappearance or the arrest and detention of Couzens, the ruling stated.

The appropriate authority (AA) asserted that the “inference to be drawn from Pc Tett’s conduct is that her purpose in trawling through the custody records was to attempt to discover the identity of the MPS police officer who had been arrested in connection with the disappearance of Sarah Everard”.

It was said Ms Tett was “ultimately successful in identifying Wayne Couzens as the police officer so detained”.

The AA said that Ms Tett, who had more than 20 years of experience, had completed training and would have known that “police data should only be accessed for official purposes only”.

It further argued that in order to access the records, she would have clicked through warnings which state it is an “offence to continue without proper authorisation”.

In her initial response to the allegations, Ms Tett admitted accessing the records but maintained she had a “a lawful policing purpose for doing so”.

She said that at the time of her allegations her role including carrying out searches across police systems and that she used Ms Everard’s case to refresh her licence on one of the systems.

The panel found the “most likely explanation for accessing the records, given that Pc Tett had no obvious personal connection to this case, was that she was motivated by curiosity to find the identity of the officer who had been arrested in connection to the Sarah Everard case”.

It said: “The panel have found that Pc Tett accessed seven records that were protected by the Data Protection Act without a proper policing purpose.

“In order to access the records she had to click through a clear warning stating that she should not access the records for anything other than a proper policing purpose.

“The panel, therefore, found that Pc Tett’s conduct had clearly breached the standards of confidentiality and orders and instructions.”

Pc Tett was found to have committed gross misconduct and she was dismissed without notice.