A POLICE constable late for work lied that it was because a cop had sexually assaulted her.
Lauren Evans, 34, said she was stopped while driving by a plain-clothes officer in an unmarked car.
She falsely claimed her attacker’s name was “Watson”.
Innocent PC Alex Watson — who had never met Evans — was arrested the next day in front of his wife and children as they arrived home from a wedding.
By chance, he had been driving an unmarked car in the area where and when fellow Met cop Evans claimed she was attacked.
PC Watson was carted off in handcuffs and spent 23 hours in custody before detectives worked out Evans concocted the story.
In a statement, he said: “To make up an allegation of this nature I find disgraceful. I was treated like a violent criminal.”
He said he and his wife, who together clocked up 30 years’ in the Met, “felt betrayed and let down by the organisation”.
Evans, of Maidstone, Kent, was found guilty of perverting justice in December.
She was sacked for discreditable conduct at a disciplinary hearing a month later.
Judge Martin Griffith said it was “all through a simple lie told in circumstances which must have had something to do with being late”.
He jailed Evans for a year at Southwark crown court, South London.
