Pressure is mounting on the police to overhaul how they investigate crimes by their own officers after it emerged the serving constable who murdered Sarah Everard was accused of indecent exposure three times leading up to her death. The Metropolitan police officer Wayne Couzens pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to the murder of the 33-year-old marketing executive. He had already admitted raping Everard after abducting her from the street as she walked home in south London in March. The crime appears to have been carefully planned, with Couzens, 48, hiring a car and buying self-adhesive tape days earlier. Everard’s murder and Couzens’ subsequent arrest sparked a wave of anger and protests across the UK and provoked fierce debate about women’s safety and failings in the criminal justice system. Couzens, an armed officer in the Met’s elite parliamentary and diplomatic protection group, was warned by the judge on Friday that his abuse of position meant he could face a whole life term at sentencing in September, meaning he would die in jail. It emerged that Couzens was accused of indecent exposure six years before he murdered Everard, and twice more at a McDonald’s in south London three days before she was killed. Kent police may have had enough information in 2015 to identify Couzens as committing an act of indecent exposure while in a car, the Guardian has learned. In June 2015 a man in Dover reported to Kent police seeing a car occupant who was naked from the waist down. It is understood he provided a description of the car, which matched the car Couzens had at the time. An investigation by the police watchdog is under way into whether Kent police had enough information at the time to identify Couzens as the occupant and thus a sex offender. Couzens was a police officer in the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC). The force said it was never told. The link between the 2015 incident in Dover and Couzens was made around May this year, after he was charged with Everard’s murder. That is when it was referred to the IOPC, who are now investigating. Tom Richards, assistant chief constable with Kent police, said: “In May 2021 Kent police made a referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct in relation to its investigation into an alleged indecent exposure in Dover, in June 2015. “It was reported at the time that a man unknown to the complainant, who was also a man, had been spotted driving a car whilst naked from the waist down. No arrests were made. “It would be inappropriate to comment further whilst the IOPC continues to carry out its independent investigation.” Labour said the police must look at their vetting processes and safeguarding systems “to ensure this can never happen again”, while women’s groups called for an independent inquiry into police misconduct. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it was launching “an investigation into alleged Kent police failures to investigate an indecent exposure incident linked to PC Couzens in Kent in 2015”. It will also examine allegations that the Met, Britain’s biggest force, may not have properly investigated further claims of indecent exposure against Couzens in London in February 2021. Twelve officers from several forces have so far been served with gross misconduct or misconduct notices regarding matters related to Couzens, the IOPC said on Friday. Privately, police leaders see Couzens and his offences as a one-off, and have not yet identified any broader issues or systems such as vetting that need urgent change. They will await the results of the IOPC investigations to see if reforms are needed. Dame Cressida Dick, the Met’s commissioner, paid tribute to “a fantastic, talented young woman with her whole life ahead of her and that has been snatched away”. “No words could adequately express the profound sadness and anger and regret that everyone in the Met, my police service, feels about what happened to Sarah,” she said. “All of us in the Met are sickened, angered and devastated by this man’s crimes. They are dreadful. Everyone in policing feels betrayed.” Harriet Wistrich, director of the Centre for Women’s Justice, called for a full public inquiry into police failures and misconduct and the wider culture of misogyny after the murders of Everard and of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman last year. “Women do not feel safe and it is incumbent on the government and all criminal justice agencies to now take action over the epidemic of male violence which is the other public health crisis of our day,” she said. Couzens abducted Everard on 3 March. That day he finished work at 7am then collected a rental car he had hired three days earlier. He drove around south London in the car before spotting Everard walking home after visiting a friend’s home at about 9.30pm. Footage from a passing bus captured the number plate of the white Vauxhall Astra used by Couzens. He had used two mobile phone numbers to hire it, one of which was a mobile number recorded on his Met police personnel file. Everard’s body was recovered from woodland near Ashford in Kent, about 20 miles west of Couzens’ home, a week later. A postmortem showed she had died from compression of the neck. After he was arrested at his home in Deal on 9 March, Couzens admitted taking Everard but initially denied her murder. He said his car was flashed by an eastern European gang and claimed they were threatening him and his family after he had underpaid for a sex worker the gang controlled and whom he had met at a Folkestone hotel weeks earlier. Couzens was vetted when he first became a police officer with the CNC in 2011. He then transferred to serve in Dungeness, Kent. The Met said he was vetted again in 2018 when he joined the force. Labour’s shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, urged the police to look again at vetting processes and safeguarding systems. “It is absolutely vital that everything possible is done to ensure this can never happen again,” he said. Jess Phillips, the shadow domestic violence minister, said the police had serious questions to answer. “The police need to be quite publicly and independently assessed about these findings. These failures are damaging for the police themselves and damaging for public confidence. “If crimes against women consistently go uncharged and unconvicted then that is a problem with institutions, not individuals. “It’s vitally important for the safety and security of our nation that women feel that they can come forward. This isn’t just about women being confident, this is about getting perpetrators of sexual crimes and battery and murder off our streets.” Jess Leigh, of Reclaim These Streets which is locked in a legal battle with the Metropolitan police after it banned a vigil it organised for Everard, echoed the call for a judge-led inquiry into police conduct. “It is very clear that the police have failed in their duty to keep people safe,” she said. “I think public confidence in the Met is on the floor already and this continues to make it worse with the same groups of people that didn’t trust them, including young women.” Deniz Uğur, deputy director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said the IOPC investigation was welcome but not enough, and called for “concrete actions, quickly, to help build trust and confidence by the public”. “When we see those in the establishment that is meant to protect women perpetrate crimes against them, it does nothing to improve trust and confidence in a system that is failing women,” she said. In March last year the Centre for Women’s Justice launched a super-complaint, containing the experiences of 19 women with claims of rape, sexual assault and domestic abuse by ex-partners in the police force. Almost 700 cases of alleged domestic abuse involving police officers and staff were reported during the three years to April 2018, according to freedom of information requests made by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The data, from three-quarters of forces, showed that police employees accused of domestic abuse were a third less likely to be convicted than the general public and less than a quarter of complaints resulted in disciplinary action.