Former Met Police officer says she could not have prevented Sarah Everard killing

A former Metropolitan police officer, who has been banned from policing over the handling of two incidents of flashing by the man who went on to murder York woman Sarah Everard, has said there was nothing she could have done to prevent the killing.

Speaking to Good Morning Britain, Samantha Lee, who was found to have committed gross misconduct at a hearing last week, said she has received death threats over her role in the investigation into Wayne Couzens exposing himself to workers at a McDonalds in the days before Sarah's death.

Ms Lee said "I've been over it a thousand times, the whole investigation took 27 months from when the horrible incident actually took place, to when the hearing began.

"Every avenue I've reached out to go 'What if I did this, would this be different?' and it just wouldn't have been in that short space of time."

She continued: "We had a licence plate, a name and an address, but as there were no victims at the venue there were no statements that were taken - they needed to be taken - so at the time there just wasn't enough evidence to bring a suspect in for an actual arrest."

Speaking of the moment she realised there was a connection between the incident she had been investigating and the death of Sarah Everard, Ms Lee said it felt "awful."

A disciplinary panel found Ms Lee did not make "the correct investigative inquiries" into the incident at the fast food outlet.

During the interview Ms Lee alleged she had been made a scapegoat by the Metropolitan Police, stating that there were other incidents of Couzens exposing himself which had not be caught either.

She said: "The way it's been portrayed from the hearing itself and from the press - which they've got from the Metropolitan Police service - is that they've dealt with the police officer and the rest of it can get swept under the table now.

"They're not going to go into what happened to the vetting, what happened to the supervision, what happened to all the higher up ranks which should also be looked into regarding the case and what actually went wrong, before the incident could have even happened."

In a statement the Metropolitan Police said: "An independent investigation by the Independent Office of Police Complaints (IOPC) concluded PC Lee should face a misconduct hearing for allegations about her honesty and integrity and how she carried out her duties and responsibilities"

In response to Ms Lee's claims she is being used as a scapegoat, the Metropolitan Police said: "The purpose of the gross misconduct hearing was not to decide whether Wayne Couzens' future offending could have been prevented."

Ms Lee now this more needs to be done to look into crimes like indecent exposure.

She said "I think a lot more needs to go into how they're actually looked into.

"They're deemed low level crimes, obviously they shouldn't be because in most sexual offences, they do elevate and they do get a lot worse.

"They start off low, it builds their confidence and then it gets worse and worse. It's a progressive crime that needs to be taken a lot more seriously."

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