David Carrick admitted 49 sex crimes including 24 rapes yesterday; he used his status as a Metropolitan Police officer to force his victims into silence.
Wayne Couzens is, of course, the Metropolitan Police officer who raped and murdered Sarah Everard, then burned the body in an attempt to evade detection.
The question is: how can we trust police services that employ such people not to abuse the new powers?
And the answer is: We can’t.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Police: who knows how many more are like Wayne Couzens? But don’t worry! Bus drivers will keep us safe from them! … Does anybody else think there might be a problem with that logic?
Let’s get this straight:
The Metropolitan Police is telling us it won’t take steps to ensure that the people we employ to prevent and detect crime won’t actually commit crimes and/or hide the evidence.
Instead it wants women who don’t trust a male officer to “wave down a bus” and get help from the driver.
What if there aren’t any buses nearby?
What if the driver is also female?
What if the driver is arrested? Pepper-sprayed? Tasered? Who would see any passengers to their destinations?
Other advice urges women to run into a house. Full of strangers? That could lead to misunderstandings, at the very least. And if pursued by the police officer, events could get very messy, very quickly.
Alternatively, it is suggested that women could phone 999. But would a misbehaving police officer really let them?
What if the police officer is carrying out his duty? Then, the bus driver or householder, or whoever, would be open to prosecution for resisting arrest, or obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty, through no fault of their own.
Meanwhile the Met has announced absolutely no plans to change its own recruitment/vetting procedures in order to avoid employing individuals who represent a danger to others.
This is while the same police service is investigating 16 other serving officers who may have committed offences.
And that’s under the leadership of a woman whose own tenure at the top has been extended for two years by the woman in charge of the Home Office.
And what about officers in other forces?
I remember an incident many years ago, when I had a migraine late at night. Unable to sleep, I went out for a walk, thinking some fresh air might help me out. Inevitably, a police car passed by and two men got out.
“Excuse me! May we ask what you’re doing out at this time of night?”
“I’m trying to walk off a migraine.”
“May we ask who you are?”
“I’m the editor of the Brecon and Radnor Express.”
“Right you are. We’ll let you get on your way.”
What if I had been a woman – and not a senior employee of the local newspaper?
Well, I wonder. And I know that’s probably doing a disservice to the officers concerned.
The Couzens case has harmed perception of more than just Metropolitan police officers.
And it isn’t about to go away. Consider these responses to the latest idiocy from Cressida Dick’s office:
How have the police managed to get themselves into a situation where their line is: if a police officer tries to arrest you, run away?
That women are STILL being told to make 'appropriate' decisions in order to protect themselves from male violence rather than the focus being on said violence & the perpetrators of it hurts & angers me in equal measures, so, so much it's hard to express #EnoughIsEnough
— Prof Gayle Letherby 💙 #PeaceAndJustice (@gletherby) October 1, 2021
Absolutely appalling. For far too long women have been told to change their behaviour. It needs to stop. Male violence is the issue. That's what must be tackled. https://t.co/xmJqrAlm0Z
We are told from being girls, just as our mothers were before us, don’t walk home if it’s dark, don’t wear headphones, carry an attack alarm, question a police officer if they want to arrest you, flag down a bus driver to police the police… when can we end this madness?
Having been punched repeatedly by a female police officer at a protest after being wrongly told that what I was doing was an arrestable offence (it wasn't), may I suggest that "ladies learn the law!" and "more women cops!" aren't themselves solutions to police violence?
On ‘Black Friday’ 1910 peaceful women protestors were brutally & sexually assaulted for hours by officers.
‘ they clutched hold of my breasts …pulled up my skirt …threw me into the crowd & incited the men to treat me as they wished’ pic.twitter.com/1Wg2PCnN2y
Home Secretary Winston Churchill was believed by many, including Emmeline Pankhurst, to have officially authorised and encouraged the assaults.#SarahEverardpic.twitter.com/SBW8LiDU9R
It is more than 100 years since those events and even now – with a woman at the top of the Met and a woman running the Home Office, are we really being told that nobody can be bothered to put a stop to this?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Cressida Dick: “Lessons will be learned”. It’s a nice promise but we’ve heard it too many times before. She has had plenty of time to devise a plan for restoring trust and she should have laid it out – but she didn’t, and she hasn’t.
I called it right, didn’t I?
Here’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick’s statement after former officer Wayne Couzens was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard. It’s more than five minutes long but you need to hear it before reading on:
Wayne Couzens has been sentenced to a whole-life prison term today for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
📺 | Watch Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick's statement in full 🔽
Where was the contrition? This was a member of her organisation, who had been vetted and found fit to represent it despite numerous reports of behaviour that should have caused serious concern in the past. His nickname at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary was “The Rapist”, for crying out loud!
And where was the plan to make the police safe again and restore confidence? On its Twitter feed yesterday, the Met promised “we’ll comment further when hearing is complete”. Well, it is complete and all we’ve had from Commissioner Dick is the hackneyed old assurance that “lessons will be learned”.
And that’s what I called yesterday. I said
They’re likely to say that lessons have been learned – but nobody will act upon them.
I was right on the first part of that, and you can bet I’ll be right on the second.
Others certainly seem to think so. One of the earliest responses to Commissioner Dick’s statement came from a Twitter user who stated: “As a result of this case, I clearly need to advise my daughter how to act/respond to male police officers until such time it’s possible again to have any trust in your organisation.”
I’m willing to wager that’s the majority view.
The judge in the case said there was no evidence that the Met closed ranks to protect one of its officers…
… and I have no doubt that he was right. That is not the issue here.
The issue is the fact that we are seeing no effort to change the structural problems within the Metropolitan Police that allowed a man like Wayne Couzens to be put in a position where he could prey upon women.
Allow me to reiterate what I stated previously about the result of this case: women will be left in greater fear of violence against them than ever – not because of men, as some in politics and the media are signalling, but because of the police.
Cressida Dick had an opportunity to reassure us all that her organisation would take specific steps to restore trust. She has made a conscious decision not to.
Are we really going to just lie back and accept that?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Why are the UK’s news media avoiding any mention of the Metropolitan Police Service’s collusion in the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard?
Commissioner Cressida Dick was well aware of concerns about Wayne Couzens, long before he planned and executed his crimes against Ms Everard.
He had been nicknamed ‘The Rapist’ by colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, which he joined in 2011, because he made some female colleagues feel uncomfortable, according to the Evening Standard.
The paper also reported that Kent Police took no action in 2015 after it was alleged that he had been seen driving around Dover, naked from the waist down.
And the Met – which he joined in 2018 – received further accusations of indecent exposure by Couzens on two further occasions. Neither of them were investigated properly in the days before he kidnapped, raped and murdered Ms Everard.
The BBC reported in July that the Independent Office for Police Conduct said a total of 12 gross misconduct or misconduct notices had so far been served on police officers from multiple forces in relation to the Couzens case, including about the handling of two separate claims that Couzens had indecently exposed himself.
And other recent cases show that police turning a blind eye to the crimes of fellow officers is at epidemic levels.
In this context, the Met put out a statement that its members were “sickened, angered and devastated” by Couzens’s crimes. Maybe they are – but is it only because he was caught?
“They betray everything we stand for,” the statement continues. But Met police officers betray everything they stand for on a daily basis.
Look at the Daniel Morgan case, in which the Met was found to be “institutionally corrupt” and Commissioner Dick herself was found to have obstructed access to vital information without reason.
And what punishment did she receive for this corrupt behaviour?
None. Instead she was rewarded for it with a two-year extension of her job.
Real people are disgusted…
Not sickened enough to prevent you from attacking the Sarah Everard vigil, and trampling their flowers into the ground, were you?
… but does that really matter when the media – and the politicians – are backing these corrupt cops to the hilt?
Look at Labour leader Keir Starmer. In his speech at the party conference – on the day we learned Couzens had abused his police powers to arrest Ms Everard before abducting, raping and murdering her – he used rape victims as a tool of emotional blackmail to push for more police powers.
I’ll hand you back to Another Angry Voice for an opinion more succinct than any I could add:
It was only last year that Keir Starmer forced his Labour MPs to abstain on legislation designed to allow undercover cops to get away with raping women!
Yet today he's pretending that he cares about rape victims.
The Met’s comment says staff recognise the concerns raised by Couzens’s actions and will comment further after he has been sentenced for his crimes – but I have no hope that anything useful will be said.
We’ll probably hear that new measures will be put in place to prevent such crimes in the future – that will not be enforced.
They’re likely to say that lessons have been learned – but nobody will act upon them.
The end result is that women will be left in greater fear of violence against them than ever – not because of men, as some in politics and the media are signalling, but because of the police.
You can bet the Met won’t do anything to change that.
If you want proof, all you have to do is wait for the reports of the next crimes committed by officers of the Metropolitan Police.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Cressida Dick: Platitudes outside a court must not save her from the consequences of her failure to root out corruption and crime among her officers.
How did a man who was nicknamed ‘The Rapist’ three years before joining the Metropolitan Police manage to pass its vetting process, let alone get into a position where he could kidnap, rape and murder Sarah Everard?
Those are the questions that should be forcing Met Commissioner Cressida Dick out of her job now, yet she seems secure in her post. For how long?
Wayne Couzens, who last week admitted raping and murdering Sarah Everard, was given the unsavoury nickname by colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, which he joined in 2011, because he made some female colleagues feel uncomfortable, according to the Evening Standard.
The paper also reported that Kent Police took no action in 2015 after it was alleged that he had been seen driving around Dover, naked from the waist down.
And the Met – which he joined in 2018 – received further accusations of indecent exposure by Couzens on two further occasions. Neither of them were investigated properly in the days before he kidnapped, raped and murdered Ms Everard.
We’ve heard this story before: it isn’t such a long time since PC (yes, he’s still on the force) Oliver Banfield was convicted of assaulting a woman while she was walking home – just as Sarah Everard was when she was kidnapped, raped and murdered. His colleagues on the Warwickshire force had initially ignored the complaint and would have done nothing about it if the victim had not found CCTV footage that could be used as evidence.
The BBC has reported that the Independent Office for Police Conduct said a total of 12 gross misconduct or misconduct notices had so far been served on police officers from multiple forces in relation to the Couzens case, including about the handling of two separate claims that Couzens had indecently exposed himself; the Banfield case wasn’t a single instance of police turning a blind eye to the crimes of fellow officers – it is an epidemic.
Ms Everard’s murder sparked a wave of protest across the UK that was put down mercilessly by police forces – most notably the Met and Avon and Somerset Constabulary. An independent Parliamentary committee has found that both forces breached the fundamental rights of protesters but neither has accepted the finding and nothing will be done to improve procedures.
Indeed, women across the UK have cause to be even more concerned that the Tory government is bringing in a law to reform criminal investigations and justice – that will put women like Sarah Everard in even more danger.
Two-faced Cressida Dick, who presided over the Met Police throughout, and who supported police in their despicable mishandling of the Sarah Everard vigil, hypocritically voiced platitudes of regret over the murder and anger over the crimes of her now-former officer after attending court.
She said she felt “sickened, angered and devastated” by the crimes: “They are dreadful and everyone in policing feels betrayed.
“Sarah was a fantastic, talented young woman with her whole life ahead of her and that has been snatched away.”
But that hasn’t saved her from the court of public opinion:
I think that if a serving Met Police officer Wayne Couzens was known as 'The Rapist' by his colleagues, and then went on to commit the horrific murder of Sarah Everard, then Cressida Dick's position is now untenable. She's been far from faultless in other areas.
Since Sarah Everard was abducted 52 women have been killed where a man is the principal suspect, according to @K_IngalaSmith's Counting Dead Women. At least 83 women are suspected to have been killed by men since the start of 2021 https://t.co/sAPmDF2ZLT#femicide
It seems strange that Cressida Dick now expresses sadness, anger and regret at the sickening murder of Sarah Everard but only a few weeks ago when her officers behaved appallingly at the Vigil for Sarah Everard, she defended their behaviour unreservedly
This Writer is willing to suggest that public confidence in the Met – and in policing in general – has never fallen so low (although it will fall further if the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is allowed to become law in its current form).
Dick has presided over a quantum plunge in the reputation of the police, ignoring one scandal after another and allowing her force to become a cesspit of corruption and crime.
Meanwhile, the successful investigation of crimes against the public has suffered. How can it not? We can’t trust the police to do their job and we’re living in fear that they will commit crimes against us themselves.
It is a poisonous situation and Cressida Dick has done much to create it.
How long are we going to allow her to continue worsening it?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
This casts a huge shadow over the UK’s police services – not only because of the crimes admitted by PC Wayne Couzens but because of the way police across the country tried to suppress public protest.
Couzens, of Deal, has admitted kidnapping and raping Sarah Everard in a hearing at the Old Bailey (although he appeared by video link from Belmarsh Prison).
He also accepted responsibility for her death but did not enter a plea on the charge of murder.
Ms Everard, 33, went missing while walking home in Clapham, south London, on March 3. She was reported missing by her boyfriend on March 4 and her body was discovered hidden in an area of woodland near Ashford, Kent, on March 10.
Couzens…
pleaded guilty to kidnapping Ms Everard “unlawfully and by force or fraud” on 3 March.
He also pleaded guilty to a second charge of rape between 2 and 10 March.
So now we know that the man who murdered Ms Everard was indeed a police officer.
This fact raises serious questions about the trust we place in our police services – as does the way police across the UK handled the public reaction to this crime.
Remember the Clapham Common vigil that police officers deliberately escalated into a full-on confrontation? They kettled peaceful attendees – most, or all, of whom were women – provoked a violent confrontation and arrested them when they protested.
They were transmitting a very clear message to all of us:
Women in the United Kingdom should fear the police. Officers are able to kidnap, rape and murder them and when this causes protest, the protesters will be arrested.
That is what the police service now represents, and while the Conservative government may not be said to be directly responsible for the criminal behaviour of these uniformed thugs, it is certainly clear that the politicians in charge have done nothing to prevent it and everything to suppress protest against it.
It stated that the force “was justified in adopting the view that the risks of transmitting COVID-19 at the vigil were too great to ignore” and that it was therefore perfectly reasonable for burly uniformed policemen to inflict violence on defenceless women.
On March 14, a further public event – this time a protest demonstration against the policing of the Sarah Everard vigil – attracted a much more low-key police response but even then the officers attending could not hide their priorities.
They clustered around a statue of Winston Churchill that they had (allegedly) been told to protect “at any cost”:
Police have come back into the crowd to stand around the Winston Churchill statue. Heard from a legal observer that a commanding officer told his colleagues “protect Churchill at all costs”. Chants of “protect women not statues”. pic.twitter.com/WJlVr18sfK
We were told that it was believed the “inappropriate graphic” contained offensive comments about her death.
The family of Ms Everard were informed of the incident but we were not told whether they had received the grovelling apology that they deserved.
The incident also served as a reminder that only last year, two policemen caused a scandal when it was revealed that they had taken selfies of themselves with the bodies of two murdered women and shared them on WhatsApp.
While we were all told at the time that “lessons have been learned” it became crystal clear that this was not true and that all women could be sure of getting from the police was contempt.
Four days later – March 20 – a serving police officer who assaulted a woman while she was walking home late at night (a direct parallel with what happened to Sarah Everard) using police techniques walked free after magistrates let him off with a fine and a curfew. He was excused community service because his lawyer said it would be hard for him to work with criminals, even though he is now a criminal himself.
The first thing Warwickshire police had done on receiving the victim’s complaint was to ignore it.
The victim then had to undergo an uphill struggle to get that police service to take her seriously, and it is unlikely that she would have had any justice at all if she had not been able to find CCTV footage of the assault.
It showed that Oliver Banfield, 25, hurled a stream of misogynistic abuse at Emma Holmer, 11 years his senior, as he tried to employ techniques he learned from police training to drag her to the ground and put her in a headlock.
I stated at the time: “Apparently this has been described as an ‘unlawful arrest’. I’m sure you can think of a much better description for what is clearly a hate attack against a woman.
“And let’s remind ourselves that Sarah Everard was ‘just walking home’ (the words have been used as a slogan ever since the incident) when she was attacked” by another serving policeman.
I added: “Two incidents cannot suggest that such behaviour is epidemic in the UK’s police. But they are enough to instil fear in every woman who has to walk home in the dark because they know they cannot automatically rely on the police to keep them safe.
“When a trust is betrayed, it can be extremely difficult to win back. Sometimes it is impossible. It seems clear that the police – and the justice system – isn’t even bothering to try.”
It is clear that we can no longer trust the police to uphold the law and protect us against crime. That contract has been broken by the police themselves.
Today, the police are able to commit crimes against us with impunity, with protests silenced by heavy-handed colleagues and suppression by both individual police services and the government, and their actions whitewashed by so-called watchdogs.
This cannot be allowed to continue.
This corruption must be purged. But how can it be done when nobody who is in a position to do it can be trusted to?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. This includes scrolling or continued navigation. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
