A former Metropolitan Police officer who falsely claimed she was sexually assaulted during a fake traffic stop because she was running late for work has been ordered back to prison after the Court of Appeal doubled her sentence.
Original sentence deemed too lenient
Lauren Evans, 35, from Maidstone, Kent, was initially jailed for 12 months on March 2 after being found guilty of perverting the course of justice at Southwark Crown Court. However, the Court of Appeal increased her sentence to two years after the case was referred under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme. Since Evans had already been released, she was ordered to return to custody.
Fabricated traffic stop and assault
Evans, who was based at Bromley Police Station, claimed she was pulled over and subjected to an intimate body search while driving on the A20 in southeast London in March 2023. She sent messages to senior officers saying 'I've just been pulled over!!' while she was late for her shift. In reality, no stop had occurred, and the lie 'snowballed out of control', the court heard. She arrived on time but appeared flustered and repeated the account to colleagues.
Judge Martin Griffith said during Evans' sentencing that her crime was 'all through a simple lie told in circumstances which must have had something to do with being late'. Evans gave a detailed and emotional statement, claiming she had been stopped by a man in an unmarked car who said he was a Kent Police officer and conducted an intimate search.
Impact on innocent colleague
The investigation involved more than 30 detectives and over 1,500 hours of work. A serving Met officer was identified as a potential suspect because he had been on the A20 at the time. He was arrested at his home in front of his wife and two young children, held in custody overnight, interviewed, suspended from duty, and later cleared when data showed his vehicle never left the motorway. Further CCTV and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) analysis proved no stop had taken place.
Evans was arrested and convicted of perverting the course of justice. In January, a misconduct hearing determined she should be dismissed from the force without notice.
