To wonder how a police national intelligence database got it so wrong re Wayne Couzens?

[Rangelife]

I have been following the inquiry/Angiolini report into Wayne Couzens, his role in the police and the years before he committed the disgusting murder of Sarah Everard. This paragraph from the BBC has really unsettled me:

'Lady Elish Angiolini says in 2018, when Couzens joined the Metropolitan Police, a search of the Police National Database - an intelligence database - found "no trace". In fact there were entries about an incident in 2013 when he was reported missing from home, and an allegation of indecent exposure from 2015. These were also missed when he applied to be a firearms officer the following year.'

There's two explanations here, both worrying. Either the database isn't red flagging previous police contact in it's vetting procedures OR the humans who are running the database and analysing the results are seeing the results but recording it as 'no trace' anyway? There doesn't seem to be any curiosity about what happened with the database, but as we have seen from the Post Office scandal these things matter. You would have thought that the vetting procedures would be failproof surely? Police get a lot of power, contact with vulnerable people and get their hands on weapons such as CS spray, tazers or firearms?

I bet they didn't even search. Or spelt his surname wrong. When I used to work for the police there would be a record of who searched what so it would be easy to check.

I think it’s the latter - humans either not doing it at all or doing it and then inaccurately analysing or recording results.

It’s terrifying really & as she says without changes it could easily happen again. I can’t help thinking the Met is rotten to the core. The number of their offices convicted of offences is staggering!

Do they only search by name/dob? Seems madness when every adult in the UK has a NI number. Or is that not adequate?

Really unsettling - now, having worked in tech it wouldn't shock me if this database was a centralised one that pulled data from lots of difference sources and wasn't doing it correctly, but considering how often this would need to be used, if that was the case you'd hope that was spotted in so many years of use!

Without going into too much detail about why i would know (cos it's outing)

a) not everything goes on the Police National Database. A missing from home report certainly wouldn't.

b) Human error is the most likely explanation.

I wonder too, it's really concerning. An absolute mess of a police force if you ask me.

Or they didn't look. Or they looked, found it and chose to ignore it.

NI Numbers aren't unique.

Oh sorry I didn't know that.

Your NI number isn't recorded as part of a crime/intelligence report. It's not something you carry around as ID and I suspect many people would have no idea what their NI number is off the top of their heads.

They do should search a lot of other things though such as vehicle registrations, known addresses etc.

Pretty poor that this doesn't appear to have happened here.

I didn’t know that so searched it up, and according to Google they are unique to the individual?

Is it something to do with the suffix?

I suspect the reason might be human error (spelling his name wrongly, or mistyping his dob) or complacency/lack of understanding of the importance of the check by the staff doing them (leading to a work culture that does not come down hard on any errors, and which possibly does not have any random checking that results are indeed accurate)

It just seems so strange that it happened twice. Okay, first time in the vetting process, you can account for human inputting error on spelling/mis type of DOB. I am not saying it's right but you can see it happening. But a year later the exact same thing happens when he applied to be a firearms officer? Which I thought (maybe naively) would have a much higher level of vetting because...well you know, these people are given guns to carry in a public area?

Maybe he had a friend or relative in the police that looked out for him. Wasn't his brother also a police officer?

exactly, its gigantic fuck up and a scary one for the public. How many times has this kind of thing happened?

The database is only as good as the information that’s input and only as good as the operator of it.

After Soham and Ian Huntley officers had to routinely do a Pnd check on offenders they were dealing with. This would highlight when there had been incident in other Police areas. But if incidents aren’t input as they happen, ie, this person has been the subject of a rape/domestic violence etc allegation, then there wouldn’t be anything on the database.

No system is infallible which is a scary prospect because when it goes wrong, usually it’s women that end up dying or suffering crimes.

I feel that anyone who is flagged up on a pnd check shouldn’t be accepted into the Police, but unfortunately people get given the benefit of the doubt. I also feel that any officer who commits domestic violence or sexual offences should be sacked but it seems to not happen. It’s no surprise the public don’t trust the Police really and I say that as someone who loved the job for thirty years.

I joined the cops in the late 80’s and the Met had a reputation then for being bent/dishonest/immoral. It seems nothing has changed.

NI Numbers aren't unique

You're wrong.

Not related to PND, but as teachers we are taught that people who seek to harm children will seek employment in schools, we have annual safeguarding training and when we are inspected we are expected to answer questions on safeguarding including what the procedure is if a child discloses information about a colleague that must be reported. It seems clear that police will attract people who wish to do harm. What I don’t understand is why a culture of vigilance about this isn’t in place.

NI numbers are unique.

yes I also wonder this, if schools can be this careful, surely the police can be and would want to be?

Even if NI numbers weren't unique, the combination of name + NI number would surely identify a person?

But that aside it's shocking the checks didn't flag a past offence. Most likely down to human error.

Most definitely not.

A girl I was at Uni with was "lucky" in that she needed to claim something very early in her job. (May have been unemployment benefit, I can't remember).

Turned out that someone else with the same name and NI was getting the credits. Obviously the Inland Revenue refused to accept they could make a mistake, But (and this is why it was lucky it was early on) she had payslips with all the details showing that she had paid.

My takeaway from the whole incident was that it wasn't by any means unusual, and apparently there were people not realising till they went to retire and discovered they had no NI payments to their name.

(You can start to see how the Post Office were so shit - Inland Revenue/HMRS use Fujitsu.)

Buttle/Tuttle

Wrong board

It's likely to be civilians fucking up if this is database and recruitment issue