What is the personality of a Met Police officer?
The Met police tried to reassure people. They failed.
The murder of Sarah Everard was, and is, a disgrace. I’m not going to talk about what women should do or how they should feel — it’s not my place, and writers such as Louise Perry, along with the statement from Sarah’s mother, have already said much better than I ever could.
If your initial reaction is to try to defend the police, then I suggest you read this thread by a former police officer, pointing out how endemic the issues are, and note that a simple search will find you plenty of examples of police officers abusing their power. You can also find plenty of examples of corruption specifically in the Met Police.
Equally, if you want to talk about the sentencing, or how this should or should not cause changes in how the police are regulated, there are better places to go. I’m very wary of this being a Piers Corbyn situation, and I do not for a second want to detract from the fact that this should be about Sarah, and that women’s voices are the ones which should be heard in relation to this case.
What I want to talk about is a very specific element of the Met Police’s media response, and how that seems to jar with the opinions not only of the public, but of police officers themselves. I want to point out how, in an attempt to present what they think is a reassuring, PR-agreed approach, they demonstrate just how serious the issues with the Met, and those who work with them, are.
The tweet above was posted by Sky News on Wednesday 29th September, accompanied by a short video clip of DCI Harding being interviewed. I haven’t been able to find the full text of him talking, but I have transcribed the most significant part below. Interestingly, a search for him brings up multiple clips on Getty Images, so he’s definitely used to coming and speaking to the press. Here is a transcript of the specific section that caught my ear:
Police Officers do not view Wayne Couzens as a police officer, they view him as a murderer who happened to be a police officer, rather than the other way round, a police officer who is a murderer. That’s a really important thing — he doesn’t hold the same values as a police officer, he doesn’t have the same personality that we do.
Taken out of context, that sounds pretty shocking. It very much sounds like the main concern is distancing Couzens from the Met Police. I’m not the only person to suggest that this came across as ignorant and misguided, to put it mildly. I was all ready to write about this statement in isolation, but thought it might be better to try to view the whole interview, just in case there was some missing context.
The full interview is worse. I’ve written a minute-by-minute breakdown of it here, but that’s over 5000 words and, in places, is a tough read.
In short, interviewer Martin Brunt and DCI Harding discuss the case and do the following:
Ask how Sarah could have behaved differently, even while admitting it would have made no difference.
Make no attempt to look at what caused Couzens to behave that way, nor how he got away with it for so long, only to briefly discuss how ‘brave’ he was.
Discuss the last hours of Sarah’s life in an almost pornographic manner.
Whine — and yes, that’s the only word for it — about how much harder this will make the police’s job.
This was a supplicatory journalist and a police officer with considerable media experience attempting to discuss the case. I don’t want to tell them how to do their jobs, but if the aim was actually to reassure the public and to make them think that this was an issue that the Met took seriously, they could have done some of — ANY of — these:
Accepted that Couzens was able to commit these acts becau
se he was a police officer, and because the public are expected to trust officers implicitly
Accept that the vetting process wasn’t good enough, and discuss what could be done to improve it
Notice that even when women behave exactly as they’re asked to, they’re still at risk, and therefore accept that it isn’t women who have to change.
Focus on Sarah and her family, and what the police are going to do to try to make things right for them.
Show some actual level of disgust towards the criminal, rather than desperate attempts to cover their backs.
Does this sound harsh? Does the necessary professionalism of a police officer prevent them from doing this?
This was from barely a month ago. Another video clip of Harding discussing the murder of women — this time two women, Henriett Szucs and Mihrican Mustafa. Compare and contrast the two statements. Here is what he said about Younis:
Incredibly dangerous. A man in my opinion, that should never ever be released from prison. He doesn’t see anything he’s done as a problem, and that’s, you know… Some people who go to court will see that, y’know, what they did, they got caught eventually. He thinks this is part of his lifestyle, to abuse women, to take money off people, to trick them into different things. He has admitted that he put the bodies in the freezer, but denied any form of murder at all, and being involved in their deaths at all. It’s just a horrendous coincidence in his life that he ended up owning a freezer that people put two bodies in, which is just farcical really. His lies had to be disproven. He brought in people into his story that he said were involved in the murder, or involved in putting the bodies into the freezer, and then the police will serve evidence on him to say that this person was in prison so they couldn’t have, so he changes his story again. And that’s about his life, he’s a manipulative, lying, repugnant individual really, who preys on women, abuses them, brings them into his world, and then for these two victims, the worst possible scenario where he’s killed them and then disposed of their bodies in a deeply unpleasant way.
No equivocating. No discussion of who he was or wasn’t. No attempt to separate him from his act or attempt to cover their own backs. In the whole 20 minute interview about Couzens I couldn’t find anything Harding said that matched that level of disdain and disgust — apart from when he got upset about how other police officers would now find their jobs more difficult.
People notice these things. People notice when you try to weasel out of admitting your guilt, or your organisation’s guilt.
I think everyone can accept that the Met Police, being a large institution, will always have some individuals who don’t meet the high levels expected. We can understand that some won’t pass training, and that amongst those who do, there may be a few who shouldn’t have.
But Couzens had three accusations of indecent exposure, and a history of making women in his workplace scared and uncomfortable. The Met Police has plenty of examples of wrongdoing, and of forcing out whistleblowers who try to bring it to light. They also have a habit, frankly, of lying.
Jean Charles De Menezes was shot eight times by police who apparently mistook him for a suicide bomber. At the time, London had recently been subject to a bombing attack, and everyone including the police was on edge. As tragic as his death was, most people I spoke to at the time accepted that it was an accident — a tragic case of mistaken identity. They read the stories. They heard that he was wearing a puffy jacket that might have had wires coming out of it, that he jumped the barrier at the tube and ran from police. That police had to make a split-second decision before he could board the tube, and might have prevented the deaths of hundreds.
Only none of that was true. In the end, his death was down to ‘catastrophic errors’ on the part of the Met. The gold commander of that operation was Cressida Dick. Now Commissioner of the Met Police.
Dame Cressida Dick gave her statement after the sentencing. You can watch the full video on the Met Police Twitter, or with better sound on the Metro website. On paper, it’s better. She makes a much better effort to centre Sarah and her family, and the fear that people are feeling. The trust that she recognises has been broken. The problem is, it’s not enough.
Go to either of those videos at around the 1m10 mark and listen. Dame Cressida reads from her statement — and I really do think that she believes this as she says it — “Police Officers are here to protect people, to be trustworthy, courageous and compassionate”.
There is laughter. Not full on guffaws. Not even a belly laugh. The bitter, cynical laugh you make when you know that someone is lying to you.
There’s a reason she chooses Courage and Compassion there. They’re two of the four values that the Met Police claim to have, that apparently shape the way they work. Unfortunately, as I’ve already pointed out, nobody gives a damn what you claim your values are — especially if it’s clear that you don’t live up to them.
Soon after, she quotes the judge in the trial.
“As the judge said, he has eroded the confidence that the public are entitled to have in the police. It is critical that every subject in this country can trust the police when they encounter them”.
Has he? Has he eroded public confidence? More than Jean Charles De Menezes? More than the Daniel Morgan corruption charges? More than the Stephen Lawrence case? More than the fact that Dame Cressida somehow stays in her role for another two years despite repeated demonstration that she’s not fit for the role?
I don’t want to speak for women, but I haven’t heard any say that this has eroded their faith in the Met. More that it’s another example of how they haven’t trusted them in years.
What’s the Met’s solution?
Would it be too obvious to point out that the places where women and girls often lack confidence in their safety are exactly the places where the cops are?
It’s not just the Met. An awful lot of police forces have corruption — this comes from having the power in the first place. Many large-scale drug dealers know which cops to pay off. Sex workers know that they can’t go to the police for protection.
Nadia Whittome MP has a thread of examples of the systemic problems in the police force — the domestic violence, the ability to resign without facing charges, the misconduct allegations. The one below stood out to me.
Why this one in particular? Because I often hear about bad apples. How individual cases are just ‘one bad apple’ that can be ignored.
The full phrase is that one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. When you don’t get rid of both the apple and what caused it, the whole barrel can rot.
Neither DCI Harding nor Dame Cressida Dick seem to have any interest in what’s causing the rot. They think that now that one bad apple has been chucked, they can carry on as normal. Their statements — their attempts to communicate with the public — show that.
It’s now the day after sentencing. The Met have released official advice to “shout or wave a bus down” if you don’t trust a male officer — yet again placing the responsibility for preventing these acts solely on the people expected to follow an officer’s orders.
So what do the actual feet-on-the-ground police think? I spent a few minutes scrolling through r/policeuk — a section of Reddit specifically for UK police officers. You can get registered on there as a ‘civilian’ or under your official rank. The term ‘civilian’ always makes me bristle here. It adds a very militaristic edge — the idea that non-police are just a blob to be herded about.
Initial impressions — most are understandably appalled by Couzens, but the general response is that not much can be done, and that if people want to abuse their position they will.
For example — this post looks at ways to improve. It notes that the vetting process is poor and underfunded. It suggests that officers could be made to leave ID and kit behind. It seems to take the position that, while off-duty, most officers don’t actually need this equipment or ID. As a ‘civilian’ I hadn’t come across the term ‘job-pissed’ before, but from a comms point of view I like it — it very clearly conveys exactly what you want it to. A person — probably male — who lets the power of the job get to their head and acts unnecessarily like an arsehole. This post made me think that officers are actually going to take it seriously, and will try to make changes.
One of the comparisons which has been made is with Dr Harold Shipman. Some armchair warriors claiming that after Shipman was found guilty ‘we didn’t stop trusting doctors’. No, but we did get wholesale changes to the system of palliative care. Maybe such changes could be in order?
Caveats — I can see that most of these officers are unverified. But it does very much look like throwing your hands up in frustration and saying ‘So what, you expect us to not be police any more?’. It all very much looks like nothing will happen, regardless of rule changes.
“There is a rule…but of course nobody follows it”.
“If he wasn’t an officer he would have found some other way of doing it”.
“If he didn’t have a warrant card he would have found one. The organisation couldn’t have prevented it”.
“If people are allowed to challenge us, they’ll be violent and we’ll be powerless”.
Most frustrating of all is the comment top-right in the second image.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, the card does not give us the powers, it’s just a form of identification”.
Compare that with DCI Harding’s approach during the full interview, when asked why Sarah got into the car with Couzens:
Harding — “Well, from a witness…we’ve heard now that a witness saw Sarah being handcuffed. Now, for somebody to get into the back of a car with a…essentially a stranger, albeit he might have a police badge… without doing anything wrong, it would take someone like Sarah probably not to get into that car. She probably wouldn’t have got into the back of that car. The only reason that I can think of, in my experience as a police officer, is that he’s had to get her into that car somehow. And the main way to get her into that car is to put her under arrest. And one of the witnesses that has come forward in that enquiry that they’ve found, has said that they saw Sarah being handcuffed”.
She got into the car, he believes, because she thought she was under arrest. More than that, a serving police officer told her she was under arrest. Police may think they have some inherent authority and that the warrant card and uniform are just for show — but those are the indications people need to believe they’re following the orders of genuine police.
If I were to walk into the street and attempt to arrest someone, they would understandably — I hope— refuse to comply. Because I’m not an officer, I’m just some random bloke. It’s the ID and the uniform that make a difference to the average person.
Cressida Dick can talk as much as she likes about ‘committing to reduce the fear of violence’ and ‘working with others to improve women’s safety’ — but as long as officers believe themselves to be above following the rules, to be a group in opposition to the public, this kind of abuse of power will continue.
She should resign — it’s been clear for a long time that she doesn’t have the trust of the public — but I’m not sure anyone else will do better. The whole concept of policing needs an overhaul. When we’re expected to blindly follow commands, and then are blamed when we do, something has to give.
Anyone who has been to a protest, anyone who is part of the BAME or LGBTQ+ communities, anyone who for any reason has ended up in opposition to a police officer knows that a person with power who decides they want to make your life difficult can be hell. For heaven’s sake, anyone who has encountered an over-zealous security guard at a club or festival knows what it’s like. The Met specifically have many examples of times where the wellbeing of ‘civilians’ has gone out of the window just because someone suspects wrongdoing.
I’m not sure what the solution is, if one is possible. I just know that anyone paying attention to what the Met is saying must have the feeling that they don’t know either.
My only hope is that this time, the people who instinctively defend all authority figures take a moment, and realise that sometimes, the cop is in the wrong. That sometimes, even if you’ve done nothing wrong, you may have something to fear.
That perhaps, the barrel is rotten.