INSIDE THE MET
When something goes wrong with policing, we hear from the most senior. The Commissioner, the Mayor of London and depending on how bad, the Prime Minister.
But the officers on our streets, those keeping us safe day-to-day often have more of an idea of what’s actually going on.
We spent some time with Romford’s Project Vigilant Unit. Sergeant Sarah Wolfe is a perfect example of an officer on the street, pushing for new initiatives to keep women and girls safe.
We sat in briefings, heard new strategies and saw the unit in action, but, is it enough?
TRUST
After decades of defending themselves, trust between the Met Police and women is broken.
There aren’t many people in London who don't know Sarah Everard’s name. In March 2021, she was walking back from a friends house when she was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a then serving police officer, Wayne Couzens.
At the height of the pandemic women of all ages poured their terror but also shared their own personal stories of sexual harassment onto social media.
A vigil for Sarah was organised at Clapham Common but the police announced it would be illegal under the Covid-19 lockdown rules and threatened the organisers with fines.
“When I heard that there was a vigil being held which then got banned I was like I need an outlet, I need something.” Dania al-Obeid was one of the hundreds of people who, despite the Police’s announcement, turned up to pay their respects to Sarah.
At the time Dania thought: “We can’t just let this go. Another woman has been murdered and has been raped.”
The atmosphere became tense. The crowd became louder, shouting at the police which is when the police began to step on flowers and Dania says it felt like it was “us against the Met Police”.
The police eventually made the decision to make arrests. Dania was one of those people and says the reason why it was such a difficult time for her was because it reminded her of her own experiences with domestic abuse.
“They felt like huge men grabbing my arm and i was just kinda like please can you not hold my arm? This was too much, we were surrounded by police officers as if we had done something really criminal.”
An independent report nto the police found they acted “appropriately” and not in a “heavy handed way” when policing the vigil.
But the report also notes public confidence suffered as a result of the vigil.
Dania is now suing the Met Police over the events that night. The police were subsequently able to charge and convict her of a crime under the single justice procedure. This is when a minor criminal offence, can be decided without going to court.
FRIDAY NIGHT WITH THE MET
It’s Friday night and we’re in Romford, North East London.
We’re with Project Vigilant. It’s a unit which is trying to keep women and girls safe. The officers go out into town and looks for men displaying predatory behaviour - so sexual harassment - and it’s an effort to stop sexual crimes from happening.
Sergeant Sarah Wolfe is leading Project Vigilant tonight. She’s extremely warm and wastes no time explaining why she’s been so quick to get the project up and running.
As a victim of domestic abuse herself, the reason she wanted to join the police herself was to make a difference, to help women who had been through similar things and change the system from within.
But one thing is clear on our night out together, she’s keen to distance herself from the bad press.
MET OFFICER DAVID CARRICK: ONE OF BRITAIN'S MOST PROLIFIC SEX OFFENDERS
Just four months after Sarah Everard’s death and Wayne Couzens was arrested, another Met Police officer was arrested on suspicion of rape.
What would later happen would prove unthinkable. David Carrick, a serving police officer, would be sentenced to 30 years in prison. He would admit to 49 charges, including 24 cases of rape. Making him one of Britain's most prolific sex offenders.
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SERGEANT SARAH: “THEY’RE NOT ONE OF US & IT ANGERS US”
Back in Romford it’s about 10pm and there’s a bit of time to ask Sarah about how she’s found the last couple of years, how has it been to see colleagues abuse their powers?
“It’s triggering, I won't lie. As a female who’s gone through domestic violence prior to joining, been a victim of sexual assault myself and not having a great police response at the time” she says.
She joined the Met to “change stuff within.”
And what does she think about Wayne Couzens, David Carrick? “They’re not one of us and it angers us. But we owe it to the public to get that trust back…because we’ve let them down.”
There’s a huge drive to see police officers responsibly reporting colleagues for any inappropriate behaviour. To stop ‘rogue’ officers going undetected.
Has Sarah had to report anyone? “I’ve done it and I’m happy to do it… if I see something I'm not happy about, they’re going to get reported because I don't want to work with them.”
“YOU’RE BANNED FROM ROMFORD TOWN CENTRE”
We’re starting to lose feelings in our fingers and so about to call it a night when we see Sarah approach a man.
He’s been standing opposite a Wetherspoons pub and the Sergeant warns him that she believes his behaviour is likely to “cause someone harassment, alarm and distress.”
So she serves him a Section 35 Dispersal Notice under the Anti Social Behaviour Act. The man is banned from Romford town centre for a period of 48 hours.
The man hands over his ID, officers store his details and he moves on.
Sarah says she was notified of the man “observing females and displaying predatory behaviour and had been there for some time.”
After continuing to observe him she made the decision to disperse him from the area. Sarah says his behaviour “hasn’t amounted to any offences at this stage but what we’ve done is get him basically out the town so that doesn’t progress into any offences."
Watching this happen was strange. I can't lie. At first it felt kind of drastic to me, a man simply standing there got banned from the area. Maybe because men watching women outside bars isn’t that surprising. But sometimes this kind of surveillance could save a life.
ZARA ALEENA
Zara Aleena was murdered after walking home from a pub in North London in Summer 2022.
Since her death, CCTV has been released of Jordan McSweeney chasing and harassing women the night he went on to murder Zara.
Echoing similar shared experiences of many women who worry about walking home after nights at the pubs and friends houses, Zara’s story again caused women across the country to grieve.
Friends have described Zara’s love language as ‘giving’. “It was very difficult for Zara to not give” says Farah Naz, Zara’s auntie.
As often happens when women lose family and friends to male violence, Farah has been campaigning for change and accountability in the name of Zara.
Jordan McSweeney had been kicked out of a pub for sexual harassment, gone into a chicken shop with his hands down his trousers and chased women down streets - and still no one called the police. Why?
Farah identifies this as a key breakdown in trust. “If police aren’t to be trusted and we don’t contact them, then the streets are not safe are they?”
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“Had all these mistakes not been made Zara would be alive. That is for sure. Because that man wouldn’t have been on the streets. And Zara would have just walked home”
And the part the police play in Zara’s murder? They “literally” handed “that man a licence to kill her”, Farah says.
Jordan McSweeney was a known, wanted man. He had been recalled to prison within a week of being released. And the Met did try and arrest him a day before he murdered Zara.
THE PUBLIC VS THE POLICE
Trust between the public and the police is absolutely essential for safe streets.
The police need us to be able to do their jobs and they need us to be able to call them if they see a man chasing a woman down the street…
But they also need to prove that when they do that, they take it seriously.
Well, after Sarah Everard’s death a review was ordered. The Met would be turned inside out. And the woman carrying it out was Baroness Louise Casey.
THE CASEY REVIEW
Just a couple of weeks after my time with Project Vigilant, The Casey Review released their report. And I went to meet Louise.
“The murder teams in the Met are superb but I ask myself, why aren’t we treating rape in exactly the same way?” She tells me.
Louise made headlines when she called the London police force “institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic”.
And she says “specialist rape and sexual assault teams have been de-specialised” so less money has gone into them. And public trust in the Met to do a good job has dropped from 74% to 36%.
The strategy of ‘violence against women and girls’ is “hollow”, she says, and is calling for a Women’s Protection Unit. To protect victims and help them navigate their way through a challenging justice system.
But she also wants to make it harder for police officers to protect each other and to be held to account through a reformed complaints system.
WHAT NEXT?
Farah Naz wants accountability. “You can’t make all these mistakes and everybody just shrugs their shoulders and say: ‘well not me, or not us, or, we did our best’ is what I keep hearing. But I don’t know. I don’t know whether people did their best.”
Baroness Louise Casey is calling for better mental health support for victims too.
I explained the outlines of what a women’s protection unit would look like to Dania, the woman suing the Met. I can tell she’s interested in it but has to stop to take a minute.
After a moment she says through tears: “If there was mental health support or people telling me my rights, it would have saved a lot of pain”.