The murder of Sarah Everard and the complicity of the police

March 14, 2021 6:32 AM

Sarah Everard was allegedly murdered by a police officer as she was walking home from a friend's house on 3rd March 2021. The response has been a national outpouring of rage and grief. CW: murder of a woman, violence, patriarchy, police complicity Police Constable Wayne Couzens was charged with Sarah Everard's murder on 12th March. A campaign on social media took place where women spoke out about the steps they needed to take to feel safe in public.

A vigil was planned in Clapham Common and other cities throughout the UK, but the organisers had to cancel it when the police showed unwillingness to work with the organisers.

Many people went to Clapham Common despite the cancellation and the vigil was stopped by police (CW: police manhandling protesters.

Today the Metropolitan police are being asked to explain why such a heavy handed approach was used to policing the vigil.

posted by Laura_J (42 comments total)

(The "steps" link goes to a 404 for me.)
posted by needs more cowbell at 6:37 AM on March 14, 2021

Sorry - try here
posted by Laura_J at 6:43 AM on March 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

From the first link: Nick Ephgrave, assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said on Friday that he understood that "women in London and the wider public, particularly those in the area where Sarah went missing, will be worried and may well be feeling frightened," and that Londoners could expect to see a rise in officers on the streets in the coming days.

What an astoundingly tone-deaf comment to make when you've got one of those officers in the cells, about to be charged with the crime.
posted by pie ninja at 6:59 AM on March 14, 2021 [72 favorites]

StephenB, probably in the heavy responses to all the protests/vigils.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:00 AM on March 14, 2021

The complicity is the part where police habitually prioritize protecting other cops over their supposed duty to protect and serve the public.

This takes a number of forms, including sky-high domestic abuse stats which go ignored, letting other officers literally get away with murder, and disproportionately escalated violence in response to protests that criticize police.
posted by FallibleHuman at 7:03 AM on March 14, 2021 [46 favorites]

Where will I find reference to "the complicity of the police"?

It seems like it's pretty evident in a bare reporting of the facts, for example in the fact that Couzens was allowed to continue on duty and without arrest despite an active indecent exposure complaint, in the Met's refusal to work with organisers of demonstrations to enable them to go ahead lawfully, and in its subsequent use of force against those who did demonstrate.

We've also got to ask exactly how and why this guy keeps ending up with head injuries in the Met's custody, because that's not exactly unsuspicious when he's pretty likely to ultimately be a primary focus of and witness in an inquiry into malpractice and systemic failures in the Metropolitan Police.

I don't think anyone who's paying attention without a vested interest really believes the Met to be an institution fit to protect the lives and safety of those it is meant to serve. The utter failure to meaningfully reform further to the Macpherson Report and subsequent reviews demonstates the Met's institutional unwillingness and inability to put its own house in order, and the complete uselessness of the "Independent" Police Complaints Commission with regards compelling it to do so.

Fuck the Metropolitan Police Service. May God rot it and all its enablers.
posted by howfar at 7:18 AM on March 14, 2021 [43 favorites]

Please amend the opening of the original post to 'A serving police office has been charged with the murder of Sarah Everard....' The matter has not yet come to trial, and statements such as the original are arguably in contempt of court. Cases have had to be abandoned for less.
posted by Hogshead at 7:25 AM on March 14, 2021 [10 favorites]

The last decade of Tory rule has made it obvious that the UK is a deeply authoritarian country, and that a lot of the electorate like it that way – but the hostility of the police to the vigil, and the hostility of many in the public ("they weren't protesting properly" etc.) really hammers it home. It's a very dark time.
posted by adrianhon at 7:28 AM on March 14, 2021 [30 favorites]

There are such "burn the witch" vibes from this photograph.
A New Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is to be debated by MPs on Monday which seeks to beef up powers to clamp down or even silence protests.
There are increasing calls for the resignation of Cressida Dick Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, a person of tainted reputation who in 2005 was in charge of the operation which resulted in the police execution of Jean Charles de Menezes.
Wayne Couzens is the accused murderer of Sarah Everard and a serving Metropolitan policeman.
There are questions being asked as to why investigtions into recent accusations of indecent exposure by Couzens were not followed up.
That the London Met is completely rotten is not new.
posted by adamvasco at 7:42 AM on March 14, 2021 [9 favorites]

the hostility of the police to the vigil, and the hostility of many in the public ("they weren't protesting properly" etc.) really hammers it home

This isn't wrong, but I think it's worth remembering that many communities have felt this way for a long time and have expressed that over and over, only to be ignored/brushed aside. I have to say watching lots of (white, cis) people on my timeline express their sudden shock and disgust over the Met's conduct this weekend only a year or so after the BLM marches across the UK felt pretty sour.

If you're Black or brown in this country or LGBT (especially visibly so) or disabled or homeless, this is not news. This is just more of the same. Middle class white cis women waking up to this fact is a good thing, but please let's not pretend that this is something that hasn't been baked into how this country runs for decades if not longer.
posted by fight or flight at 7:46 AM on March 14, 2021 [41 favorites]

Mod note: Several comments deleted, some responses left standing. StephenB, do not comment in this thread if you only plan to probe about the complicity involved in this terrible incident. I have also added "allegedly" to the post's text since the trial is not yet complete. Thanks to all for bringing this to our attention!
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 7:46 AM on March 14, 2021 [16 favorites]

Quick reminder folks: a criminal trial can fail if media attention means that the accused can't be tried fairly. That is taken very seriously in the UK, and that's why 'contempt of court' is a criminal offence.

So please let's have this discussion without doing anything to jeopardise the forthcoming trial.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/media-advisory-notice-disappearance-of-sarah-everard
posted by vincebowdren at 7:46 AM on March 14, 2021 [15 favorites]

Reminder that although British policing is notionally based on Peelian principles rather than an American-style gendarmerie, Peelian policing is community policing, which simply doesn't apply to large forces such as the London Metropolitan Police, Police Scotland, the Northern Irish Constabulary, and others. They have gradually drifted further and further into an American-style pre-emptive, reactively violent model of policing, especially when tackling perceived public order situations.

Then there've been a decade of cuts to the courts, legal aid, police budgets, judiciary,and criminal justice system such that there has been a complete collapse in successful prosecutions for rape, the average time for a case to come to trial has risen to 3-5 years, the prison system is on the edge of collapse, an increase in defendants trying to defend themselves in court because they can't get legal aid for a defense lawyer, and so on. The system is in crisis.

Finally the government made a horrendous strategic blunder by trying to tackle COVID19 lockdown/isolation as a public order situation, rather than a public health one. People who are out and about are thus treated as rioters rather than a medical education/remediation problem. The police don't have a clue how to deal with public health and are prone to aggressive, violent escalation rather than de-escalation and calm containment, and successive conservative Home Secretaries -- first Theresa May, now Priti Patel -- are prone to pandering to their party's "hang'em and flog'em" chorus line.

This latest mess is just bringing it home to the respectable middle-class folks who weren't targeted during previous waves of respression, such as the 2011 riots. It's a crisis of legitimacy both in policing and in criminal justice, and I fear the party in power, who are the most right-wing authoritarian mob since Thatcher, are only going to inflame it.
posted by cstross at 7:54 AM on March 14, 2021 [63 favorites]

fight or flight: As a POC who’s faced racism in the U.K., believe me, I’m aware. But I feel even more depressed about the future now than I have for a long time.
posted by adrianhon at 7:58 AM on March 14, 2021 [4 favorites]

PS: the current Conservative and press culture war against woke culture in the UK and left-wing cancel culture aimed at grotesquely offensive racist and sexist outbursts -- see also the British press backlash over the Meghan/Harry business last week as an example -- has been interpreted as an implicit endorsement by those racist, sexist individual police officers who were previously inclined to take a confrontational approach towards peaceful protests. Much as Trump's election (and Brexit) gave a morale boost to every petty fascist, so too do the Tory culture wars rhetoric act as an inflammable accelerant in situations like this.

And tomorrow's vote on the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill in the House of Commons -- which proposes to make annoying members of the public in the course of a protest an offense carrying a 10 year prison sentence -- is yet another part of it. (If you're in the UK, email or tweet or DM your MPs, please?)
posted by cstross at 8:04 AM on March 14, 2021 [32 favorites]

Absolutely horrifying. I didn't know Sarah but I have friends who did and who were there yesterday.

No idea what on earth the Met was thinking in their handling of the vigil. First in not working with organisers to allow it to go ahead officially and then treating people with this kind of aggression. Maybe that's just their default setting at this point?

I would be really surprised if it doesn't turn out that this man doesn't have a previous record of concerning behaviour that dates back much further than the recent indecent exposure and that it hasn't been systematically allowed to slide for years. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't get the sense that this kind of violence comes out of nowhere.
posted by atrazine at 8:06 AM on March 14, 2021 [11 favorites]

Sorry @adrianhon, I didn't mean that to be a call out, just a jumping off point to express my personal frustrations over what I've been seeing in my social media over the weekend (and my memories of watching five coppers "talk" to the 10 year old boys who live next door to me at our local community's street fair a few years ago).
posted by fight or flight at 8:06 AM on March 14, 2021 [2 favorites]

Apparently Labour will be voting against the bill, despite Keir Starmer initially whipping to abstain.

Sounds like some MPs see the writing on the wall, though I don't doubt it would be passing unopposed if not for what happened this weekend.
posted by fight or flight at 8:10 AM on March 14, 2021 [3 favorites]

Only recently Met police officers were arrested over sharing 'selfies' taken with the bodies of two murdered sisters.
posted by adamvasco at 8:13 AM on March 14, 2021 [9 favorites]

tomorrow's vote on the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill in the House of Commons -- which proposes to make annoying members of the public in the course of a protest an offense carrying a 10 year prison sentence

Does that extend to members of the public annoyed by police presence at their protests?
posted by trig at 9:26 AM on March 14, 2021 [3 favorites]

While the search for Sarah Everard was ongoing, Baroness Jones suggested in the House of Lords she may introduce a future amendment for there to be a curfew for men after 6pm. When the predictable outraged responses came, she commented further:

"I was just trying to highlight that when the police victim blame by asking women to stay home, we don't react. We just think it's normal," Baroness Jones said.
Asked if this would just be inflicting on men what women have to endure, even though it is self-imposed, she replied: "Exactly. That's my exact point."
...
She said that misogyny should be made a hate crime, adding that while "all men are not abusers", "all men can help" stamp it out of society.

And for men who aren't aware or just ignore what walking the streets is actually like for women, I'll add Marina Hyde's latest column.

Quick, do the triage. How seriously do I take him? He hasn’t grabbed me, so my sense is that he’s one of the good street harassers. That would be great news for this fucking whore currently being asked who the fuck she thinks she is. Hang on, he’s got a shopping bag. New data points, need to establish what’s in it. Oh. A really big box of chocolates. I wonder if he’s saying sorry to someone. Or maybe I love you. “I love you. Also, you’ll never guess what I did on the way home."
....
Anyway, how was school? “Fine. Why are we going home this way?” Because this is the way we go now. We’re probably going to go a few different ways for a bit. So this is one of the ways we go now. Let’s just get home. I mean, nothing really happened.

Evidence is growing that mass outdoor events do not lead to significant covid exposure. The Met police had a chance to work with organisers for the Clapham vigil and ensure social distancing and face masks - as other police forces managed - but of course they went with the threat of £10,000 fines and wrestling women to the ground who dared to go anyway.

This country is fucked up in so many ways, but I can't even imagine what it must be like to live with the constant awareness - and regular reminders - that so many men think they have to right to do whatever they damn want to women. After seeing the vitriol over Meghan Markle lately, and the responses to this latest murder, that 6pm male curfew seems more and more like it'd be worth a go.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 9:36 AM on March 14, 2021 [34 favorites]

And tomorrow's vote on the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill in the House of Commons -- which proposes to make annoying members of the public in the course of a protest an offense carrying a 10 year prison sentence

What the actual fuck? Even full on "lawn order" states in the US aren't that insane.
posted by wierdo at 9:48 AM on March 14, 2021 [6 favorites]

that 6pm male curfew seems more and more like it'd be worth a go.

I know this is a flippant comment but the idea of turning gender identity policing into an actual law and putting it in the hands of the current government/justice system is horrifying to me. I've already seen certain sections of certain feminist groups stepping up their campaign against "male infiltration" of the movement (read: trans women existing). I don't doubt what happened this weekend will radicalise them further against people they read as a threat to womanhood.
posted by fight or flight at 9:55 AM on March 14, 2021 [10 favorites]

What the actual fuck? Even full on "lawn order" states in the US aren't that insane.

This is the right wing response to the Extinction Rebellion protests, that do such heinous things as block traffic in London.

Also - yes, I'm not serious about the 6pm curfew. Not least as it would likely mean angry, dangerous men being stuck at home with handy women or children nearby to abuse; domestic abuse already being a huge problem that is barely taken seriously. And as you say, giving the police and tories even more enforcement powers against those they dislike for being brown or poor or trans is not a good idea.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 9:55 AM on March 14, 2021 [5 favorites]

The blog language: a feminist guide has a post about this: When words fail us

Women responded with an outpouring of rage that lit up social media to the point of becoming news in its own right. But the reactions this anger prompted showed how powerful certain assumptions, and the linguistic formulas that encapsulate them, still are.

There are many examples I could give: I could write, for instance, about the number of men who expressed their sympathy ‘as a husband and father’, or made an analogy between sexual violence and theft (‘it’s too bad that your lives are limited by the threat of male violence, but that’s just the way of the world: you wouldn’t leave your car unlocked with the key in the ignition either’), or pointed out that more men than women are murdered (because god forbid that the killing of a woman should spark a conversation about, specifically, violence against women). But since this is just a blog post, not a treatise, I’m going to concentrate on what is arguably the most basic of all the inadequate and misguided responses we have heard this week: the idea that women, those irrational creatures, were ‘getting things out of proportion’.

posted by Lexica at 10:14 AM on March 14, 2021 [23 favorites]

Funny how demonstrations always manage to be peaceful until the cops get involved. Weird! Strange!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:00 AM on March 14, 2021 [38 favorites]

And tomorrow's vote on the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill in the House of Commons -- which proposes to make annoying members of the public in the course of a protest an offense carrying a 10 year prison sentence

I don't want to sidetrack the discussion, but a quick clarification may be useful here. 'Annoyance' has a specific meaning in English law, as part of the common law offence of public nuisance. This is a bit different from the everyday use of the word when we say that we're annoyed by something: 'dude, you're being seriously annoying!' or whatever.

So the new Police Bill isn't creating a totally new offence of 'annoyance' where none existed before. But what's new is that, for the first time, it's sticking a heavy prison sentence on it. And as the legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg points out, that's not good news if you believe in the right to peaceful protest:

Peaceful protestors who have caused inconvenience but no damage — or damage but no inconvenience — will for the first time be facing lengthy prison sentences. This is precisely the wrong time to be proposing such a fundamental change.
posted by verstegan at 11:02 AM on March 14, 2021 [13 favorites]

Thanks for posting this - I'd seen pictures of the police making arrests but they didn't provide the context for what the protests were about.
posted by Candleman at 11:45 AM on March 14, 2021

fight or flight: "If you're Black or brown in this country or LGBT (especially visibly so) or disabled or homeless, this is not news. This is just more of the same. Middle class white cis women waking up to this fact is a good thing, but please let's not pretend that this is something that hasn't been baked into how this country runs for decades if not longer."

I'm a brown lady living in the US, and share these complicated feelings when things finally get bad enough for white (and male) folks to take notice. I try to push back at my anger of being treated like crap and it not being enough, but now it's a white woman, so here we go, so we can focus on progress and moving forward. But, I don't know if that's the healthiest response either.
posted by bluefly at 11:58 AM on March 14, 2021 [16 favorites]

The Met have long had a reputation for thuggery towards those groups they didn't approve of. What has triggered many of the headlines is that yesterday they were thuggish towards (mostly?) white, peacefully vigilant, women. When policing football yobs or brexit supporters they are always more laid back, perhaps it has been suggested, because they can empathise with those groups.

This was such a tone deaf act that it must surely have had to be a result of political pressure, any pragmatic police officer would have thought "oh, leave them to it, they'll have gone home by 9pm". Someone wanted to look tough.
posted by epo at 1:24 PM on March 14, 2021 [8 favorites]

#allinthistogether - Police Chief Cressida Dick urged Priti Patel to use Extinction Rebellion ‘opportunity’ to curb protest rights.
....protests provided a "much-needed opportunity” to give police greater powers to curb protests in the UK.
“My colleagues and I will continue to work constructively and positively with ministers and officials to take forward these changes.”
posted by adamvasco at 1:56 PM on March 14, 2021 [5 favorites]

The Met have long had a reputation for thuggery towards those groups they didn't approve of...This was such a tone deaf act that it must surely have had to be a result of political pressure

While certain kinds of political pressure were doubtless present, I wouldn't underestimate the extent to which a lot of men, particularly men like the wifebeating dickheads who make up a statistically disproportionate chunk of men in the police in general and the Met in particular, don't approve of women who criticise them, and quickly resort to intimidation and then battery when they encounter such people. Plenty of peaceful middle class white women got assaulted at Greenham Common over the years, too.
posted by howfar at 2:01 PM on March 14, 2021 [21 favorites]

From the tone–deaf orchestra department: A scuffle has broken out as a pro-Assange activist has gatecrashed the vigil. Crowd roundly telling him to [depart]

I mean, of all demonstrations to hijack in defense of a guy who doesn't respect women's boundaries (at the very least).
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:27 PM on March 14, 2021 [11 favorites]

I know this is a flippant comment but the idea of turning gender identity policing into an actual law and putting it in the hands of the current government/justice system is horrifying to me. I've already seen certain sections of certain feminist groups stepping up their campaign against "male infiltration" of the movement (read: trans women existing). I don't doubt what happened this weekend will radicalise them further against people they read as a threat to womanhood.

if one follows/observes the anti-trans activists in the uk, it's actually quite clear that they're trying to tie the entire situation to trans women (when no link exists), and are now agitating against the feminist groups that led the vigil because they're inclusive.

some are also now falling outright into conspiracist/fascist thought, including suggesting that the police were justified and that a few of the women arrested were "crisis actors", so. take from that what you will.
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:20 AM on March 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

A report that police ignored a report of indecent exposure after the Saturday vigil and only began to deal with it today.
posted by biffa at 12:07 PM on March 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

Met officer is taken off Sarah Everard duties over 'offensive' WhatsApp image [Guardian/contains no images of Sarah Everard or the investigation, link has text only]
posted by ellieBOA at 1:34 AM on March 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

As many as 26 members of the Metropolitan Police were arrested between January 2018 and August 2020 for sexual offences, a previously unpublished Freedom of Information (FOI) request reveals.
posted by adamvasco at 12:08 PM on March 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

Fuuuuuckkkkk
posted by ellieBOA at 11:02 PM on March 16, 2021

The Met is also institutionally racist.
Former Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner, Rowley was the national lead on counter-terror policing from 2014 to 2018. In February 2017, he met with two representatives of the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) – senior research fellow Hannah Stuart; and chief operations officer Katie Parrett – at his office in New Scotland Yard. Rowley had also endorsed Stuart’s report for the HSJ on Islamist terrorism.
The Henry Jackson Society is a British conservative lobbying group sponsored by the financial backers of the US far-right – including several anti-Muslim hate groups.
posted by adamvasco at 4:05 PM on March 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

More uk police news:
Off-duty police officer, 25, who attacked 'terrified' woman walking home spared jail.
His lawyer argued he should not have to do community service because it would be “difficult” for him to work with criminals.
posted by adamvasco at 12:32 PM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Note that the CPS initially tried to pretend they couldn't prosecute him, too. Weirdly they also make that call whenever the police murder a Black person. I wonder why that is. It's just so strange.

Little known fact: the "CP" in CPS actually stands for "Crown Prosecution", not "Copper Protection".
posted by howfar at 10:14 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]

Revealed: the grim list of sex abuse claims against Metropolitan police.
There was a total of 594 complaints against Met employees between 2012 and 2018, of which 119 were upheld.
They included an officer who was sacked after having sex with a rape victim, and an officer who was dismissed after allegedly pretending to be a woman online “to advance his sexual proclivities and also film a woman apparently having non-consensual sex with a male in a public park”.
posted by adamvasco at 4:20 PM on March 20, 2021 [2 favorites]