To be angry at the frenzy caused by others last night

[BarometerTV]

I think it was utterly disrespectful. We are in lockdown and it was not the right time for a protest. I agree with a quiet, respectful, socially distanced space to grieve - which is what appeared to happen during the day.

@StillGoingToWork How can you claim that the Met are institutionally racist but not support BLM

@BarometerTV.

I’m sorry - but maybe the difference here is that I respect the vast majority of police officers, I respect that a protest was not supposed to be going ahead last night, I respect that we are in lockdown.

The Met acknowledged at the court case on Thursday that covid law did NOT mean a blanket prohibition of protests/demonstrations/vigils. You should research the topic you post about more thoroughly before you post or you risk coming across as a half informed twit

@BarometerTV

If it had been a teacher who was involved, would we be protesting against teachers?

Your comparison is wrong.

If a fireman had turned out to be an arsonist and killed a woman there would be as much anger.

This cop showed warning signs of being a menace to women. Exposing himself is miles from abduction and murder but why on earth was he still working when it was known that he was a danger to women?

This is a protest to alert the public that women do not know who to trust when a police officer with a gun licence is charged with murder and kidnap.

I think the police had it wrong and I say this as a baby boomer who was brought up in the area and lived there for 40 years. We were careful where we walked alone, went in pairs or got lifts. From my early 20's we had cars. Nothing has improved in my lifetime, in fact it's possibly worse.

@StillGoingToWork

That's a great post. So agree.

And Patel now distancing herself from this makes me sick.

@Theluggage15

Blind respect for the police. How sheltered your life must be. You weren’t there, you have no idea what you’re talking about. My daughter said it was a nice atmosphere until the police waded in. They were clearly looking for an excuse to get stuck in. They didn’t even need to be there.

Funny how all the men celebrating Rangers winning the league and jumping on cars were just watched by the police but a crowd of mainly women and in they go to ‘sort them out’.

Police are lazy. They pick off the “low hanging fruit” to get their stats up, but ignore real, more complex issues. So easy to push about a bunch of women and get some arrests and tickets handed out.

Clapham Common is massive OP. It would have been completely possible and reasonable to have an organised vigil that kept to social distancing guidelines.

Why the police didn’t work with the organisers is anyone’s guess - but the fault lies with them. Women are very angry at the threads to their safety and they are entitled to hold a vigil. We have to work around Covid not stop the world for it.

A vigil was possible. The Marshals were in place through RTS to make it happen. Met Police said no.
This is on them 100%

I have huge sympathies to everyone in this horrible situation. IMO I think there were a large number of anti-police, anti-covid fed up people in that crowd who were there to turn a vigil into a protest.Hugely disrespectful to Sarah Everard and her family, who had stated they didn't want it to go ahead

Patsy Stephenson (the woman with red hair being arrested in photos) was asked why she was there and didn't mention Sarah's name. twitter.com/counterfireorg/status/1370899755786702849

There are plenty of opportunities to protest against the horrific treatment of woman in a covid-safe way, hijacking someone's memorial is not the way to go about it.

[quote BarometerTV]@SmidgenofaPigeon have I? People are blaming the actions of one terrible police officer on all police officers. That’s stereotyping and it’s wrong.[/quote]
NO!!! People were coming together to mourn a young woman who was brutally kidnapped and murdered. BY A POLICE OFFICER. It was peaceful until MALE POLICE decided was proportionate to MANHANDLE and arrest women. This is police from the same force!!!

@BarometerTV please do some research before giving your opinion in future 😡

@oldegg123

I have huge sympathies to everyone in this horrible situation. IMO I think there were a large number of anti-police, anti-covid fed up people in that crowd who were there to turn a vigil into a protest.Hugely disrespectful to Sarah Everard and her family, who had stated they didn't want it to go ahead

Patsy Stephenson (the woman with red hair being arrested in photos) was asked why she was there and didn't mention Sarah's name. twitter.com/counterfireorg/status/1370899755786702849

There are plenty of opportunities to protest against the horrific treatment of woman in a covid-safe way, hijacking someone's memorial is not the way to go about it.

I noted the lack of mention of Sarah's name in her comments, too. It was very much all about her, to me. Not great.

There are plenty of opportunities to protest against the horrific treatment of woman in a covid-safe way, hijacking someone's memorial is not the way to go about it.

Agreed.

I think to understand people’s anger at the police action you do really need to look at this in context.
There has been a huge outpouring of grief because a young woman has been abducted and brutally murdered. This has been a catalyst for other women to share their own experiences and fears. The person charged is a serving police officer, and there are rumours that previous reports of unacceptable behaviour by this individual have not been properly dealt with.
A court had decided that it wasn’t illegal for such events to go ahead, it was a matter which needed to be resolved between the police and the organisers. The Met would not engage with the organisers. The bad publicity caused by the Met in the lead-up encourage many more to attend, no doubt including a few trouble-makers. The lack of meaningful discussions with the organisers created potential for a clash.
This was a vigil, other similar events went ahead peacefully yesterday across the country with no arrests.
Other not-related events have been permitted over the past year - BLM, protests about lockdown, the football event in Scotland. This events involved very light and benign policing.
Last night police decisions inflamed the situation - kettling, trampling all over flowers and candles. The video and pictures of women standing peacefully being man-handled and arrested sickens me. It appears that the more aggressive and inflammatory men who attended to cause trouble were not dealt with by the police at all.
Cressida Dick has a long history of making poor decisions. Across the political and opinion spectrum people are very critical over what happened. There needs to be an urgent inquiry into the policing of the event and the decisions made, and whether Govt ministers were involved in directing these decisions. Cressida Dick needs to stand down (or resign) until after the inquiry.
Policing in this country works through the public consent and trust. Women don’t under report crimes against them, because they have little trust that the police will take any or appropriate action, last night and the events over the past few weeks have helped highlight this.

It was peaceful until 9 police vans turned up plus dogs and a helicopter.

OTT response.

The risk of outdoor transmission is minimal - Whitty and Valance both agree with this - so there was no scientific basis on which to ban the vigil. I was there, with my teen daughters. It was peacefully; as women we had gathered together to peacefully highlight the plague of violence against women. Then the police decided to silence us by committing violence against women. Then in the early hours the Met release a statement essentially saying it was our fault. Classic victim blaming from the abuser. How anyone can look at these basic facts and not be horrified is beyond me.

@BarometerTV

Vigil yes, protest no. And I would suspect that the police had a hard time dispersing protesters v people who were attending as a vigil.

@BarometerTV it was a vigil till the police showed up!

Whilst I don’t agree with any protest or gathering during lockdown. I agree 100% with the campaign and would have been there had it been a few months time.

If it is how the pictures look, the police fucked up. They fucked up massively.
Give the crowd a chance to quietly be and then they would have moved on. Forcing it given the apparent circumstances was just wrong. They got it wrong.

To be scrupulously fair, going by the various clips available from all involved, it was all calm before:

Some of the media scrum, possibly bored or cold, started calling out some fairly insensitive shit.

Some of the placarded protestors started shouting and chanting, possibly even spitting at the police.

Some police moved in on a group of women standing, quietly holding candles.

It doesn't seem to differ friending on which factions words and pictures you look at.

Though I am certain to have missed something, as it wasn't all filmed and I wasn't there.

I was walking my dog talking to a small group if young men sat out in the park. They were trying to look friendly, they asked if I thought they were threatening. It was quite an eye opening discussion.

No-one is blaming the Met for the actions of one aberrant individual.

They are blaming Scotland Yard for completely ballsing up, having no understanding of the issue, being completely over the top, aggressive policing and not working to make the event safe and managed as they should have done.

I actually felt sorry for the uniformed officers last night. They were obeying orders and to be outnumbered and surrounded by a large crowd of screamingly furious women with head torches must have been frightening.

The officer in charge of the operation however, is a complete buffoon - and that's me being very polite.

@TheVelvetiser

The risk of outdoor transmission is minimal - Whitty and Valance both agree with this - so there was no scientific basis on which to ban the vigil. I was there, with my teen daughters. It was peacefully; as women we had gathered together to peacefully highlight the plague of violence against women. Then the police decided to silence us by committing violence against women. Then in the early hours the Met release a statement essentially saying it was our fault. Classic victim blaming from the abuser. How anyone can look at these basic facts and not be horrified is beyond me.

Respectfully I disagree on this point about outdoor transmission. It depends on the context, and the specific situation of large numbers of people in close proximity has not been modelled.

You had 1000s of people packed together, each shouting the next line of the speech being given by the woman on the bandstand to the crowd behind them. Of course the risk is lowered by it being outside, but if there was anyone there currently with COVID, it is likely their neighbours would have been exposed.

I've not seen any pics of the police shining a light when there were plenty of them taking a knee last summer.

They worked out that nobody caught Covid on overcrowded beaches last summer. It's a massive mistake that they didn't work with organizers because I suspect that some turned up because it was denied permission and they might have remembered at home instead.

women should be allowed to grieve and morn in peace, what the police did at that ceremony was disgusting. I understand the frustration with the no social distancing, as i want to come out of this lockdown along with the rest of the country, however the fact many females cannot come out of their homes without feeling as if they are in danger is more worrying to me.
as well as this, the police were in the wrong here, using violent tactics on women standing peacefully and respectfully. i know for a fact that police have not been that violent towards other meet ups in lockdown, mainly consisting of males. so was the police's actions because the vigil was 'disrespectful' or 'unsafe' or 'violent' like the media portrays it to be, or was it because it was women?

@Roussette

OP it could've also been 'beautiful' at night too.

the organisation RTS tried repeatedly to negotiate with the Met, to no avail. It went to the High Court, who said a vigil could take place. RTS had lots of marshals arranged to help at the Vigil. Still the Met said no.

Funny though that the Rangers fans marched with a police escort, all herded together. And the Police allowed that and almost encouraged it, lining the streets with the fans (Scottish police admittedly) yet this... women gathering to hold a vigil for another woman murdered by one of their own, and there are heavy handed tactics.

I came on to say basically this. The response to the Rangers celebrations last week was just astonishingly different. Stand back, hands off, crack on with your celebrations lads.

I’m on the fence with regard to whether the event SHOULD have happened or not, but the fact is that the organisers did everything right, and regardless of the fact that it was officially cancelled, given the fervour on social media and the stirring of emotions of this awful event (as well as, of course, the far too many others - Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry to name just two) it’s almost inevitable that it WOULD. The Met have catastrophically fucked up, particularly given the likely perpetrator of Sarah’s killing.

Apologies for getting the ACAB thing wrong. I'd never heard it before last year so jumped to the conclusion it had come over here from the BLM protests in the US. Another lesson learned.