An inspection commissioned after the murder of York woman Sarah Everard has concluded that hundreds, if not thousands, of corrupt officers may be serving in England and Wales police forces.

The chances of someone like Ms Everard’s murderer Wayne Couzens getting a job as a police officer would have been “clearly reduced” if measures to improve screening checks had been put in place earlier, inspector of constabulary Matt Parr said, as he condemned poor police vetting standards.

His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) looked at eight forces, reviewing hundreds of police vetting files for recent recruits. It said it uncovered too many cases where people, including those with criminal records or links to organised crime, should not have been allowed to join the police and that it was “too easy” for them to do so.

The inspection was commissioned in October last year by then-home secretary Priti Patel.

It came after Wayne Couzens was given a whole-life jail term after using Covid powers to arrest former Fulford School pupil Ms Everard as she walked home from a friend's house, before raping and killing her.

York Press: Sarah EverardSarah Everard

The report concluded a culture of misogyny, sexism and predatory behaviour towards female police officers and staff and members of the public still exists and is “prevalent” in many forces.

Mr Parr said this culture was prevalent in “all the forces we inspected”, which he branded a “depressing finding”.

As well as forces linked to Couzens – The Metropolitan Police, Kent Police and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary – the inspection scrutinised practices at Cumbria, South Wales, Nottinghamshire, Dorset and Devon and Cornwall forces.

Mr Parr said: “It is too easy for the wrong people to both join and stay in the police. If the police are to rebuild public trust and protect their own female officers and staff vetting must be much more rigorous and sexual misconduct taken more seriously.”

Although he could not estimate overall how many such officers are still serving, he told reporters: “It seems reasonable for me to say that over the last three or four years, the number of people recruited over whom we would raise significant questions is certainly in the hundreds, if not low thousands… it’s not in the tens, it’s at least in the hundreds.”

The report said there had been “many warning signs” over the last decade that the system was not working well enough.

Asked if Couzens would have been able to join the Met had previous recommendations to tackle longstanding problems with vetting procedures been adopted, Mr Parr said: “The shoddier your vetting system is, the greater the chance of somebody like Couzens joining you.

“Now I can’t say that he would never have joined or never been allowed to transfer. What I can say is the tighter your standards, and if some of the recommendations we’ve made had been enacted, the chances of something like that happening are clearly reduced.”

Mr Parr accused chief constables and police leaders of failing to “appreciate the damage to their reputation and the danger to the public caused by not having a significantly more rigorous process for identifying who shouldn’t join and who shouldn’t stay”, adding: “It’s something that I think that there has been a degree of complacency about and I think the lessons of the last few years have given ample warning of that.”

The pressure to meet the Government’s target to hire 20,000 new officers by March 2023 “cannot be allowed to act as an excuse” for poor vetting practices, Mr Parr said, later adding: “There is no excuse for lowering your standards to the extent that we’ve seen in this report, and by doing so, all you’re doing is storing up problems for later.

“The marked decline in public trust for policing is undoubtedly linked to the prevalence of some of these dreadful incidents we’ve seen in recent years, and you should have a higher standard of who gets in and who stays in if you’re going to look to reduce those kinds of incidents.”

The watchdog looked at 11,277 police officers and staff, examined 725 vetting files, considered 264 complaint and misconduct investigations as well as interviewing 42 people.

Inspectors found cases where:

– Criminal behaviour, such as indecent exposure, was dismissed as a “one-off”;

– Applicants with links to “extensive criminality” in their families were hired by forces;

– A chief constable argued hiring an officer transferring from another area would make the force “more diverse” despite a string of allegations spanning several years which could have amounted to sexual assault if proven;

– Warnings a prospective officer may present a risk to the public were ignored;

– Incidents which should have been classed as gross misconduct were assessed as a lower-level disciplinary matter or “not treated as misconduct at all”; and

– Basic blunders led to the wrong vetting decisions.