Met Chief Marks Five Years Since Sarah Everard’s Murder With Vow to Keep Cleaning Up Force

Met Chief Marks Five Years Since Sarah Everard’s Murder With Vow to Keep Cleaning Up Force
Five years on from the murder of Sarah Everard, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has set out how the force has overhauled its vetting and misconduct processes — and acknowledged that work to rebuild trust with women and girls is far from finished.
Everard, 33, was abducted, raped and murdered in March 2021 by Wayne Couzens, a serving Metropolitan Police officer who used his warrant card to make a false arrest. The case triggered widespread public outrage and prompted urgent scrutiny of standards inside one of Britain’s largest police forces.
Sir Mark, who took over as Commissioner the following year, said the force had since carried out “the biggest integrity reset UK policing has ever seen.” In the five years since Everard’s death, the Met has doubled its vetting failure rates and removed 1,500 officers and staff — a figure the Commissioner described as central to efforts to root out those who undermined public confidence.
The force also re-examined a decade’s worth of allegations involving sexual and domestic abuse by Met officers and staff, a process Sir Mark said ultimately led to a change in the law to allow the removal of those found guilty of such conduct.
Couzens is currently serving a whole-life prison sentence. The Angiolini Review, an independent inquiry into how he was able to remain in policing despite prior concerns, made a series of findings about systemic failures in how misconduct allegations are handled across the service.
Sir Mark acknowledged that the murder had “shook policing to its core” and described it as an abuse of the powers officers are granted by the public. He said decent officers across the country had been left furious that a colleague had committed what he called “such a monstrous crime.”
Everard’s family, he noted, had shown “extraordinary dignity” throughout years of legal proceedings and public scrutiny.
The Commissioner was direct in stating that the Met had not always met its responsibilities toward women, framing the issue as both an operational and moral priority going forward.
With the Angiolini Review making clear that violence against women and girls requires a national response — not just a policing one — forces across England and Wales are expected to continue implementing its recommendations. The Metropolitan Police is scheduled to publish further updates on its reform programme later this year.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​