Sarah Everard murder: UK PM Boris Johnson urges public to trust police

Highlighting the grave concern about the women's safety issue, UK prime minister Boris Johnson said on Friday that the British people “can trust” the law enforcement. “Our police are there to protect us – and I know that officers will share in our shock and devastation at the total betrayal of this duty,” Johnson stated in his first remarks following the conviction of officer Wayne Couzens, who raped, abducted, and murdered the 33-year-old British girl Sarah Everard. Johnson stated that Britons “must be able to walk on our streets without fear of harm and with full confidence that the police are there to keep them safe.” Furthermore, he elaborated that hiring more female police officers "can make the most fundamental change” in the law enforcement systems. 

[This undated file photo issued by the Metropolitan Police shows Sarah Everard. Wayne Couzens appeared at London's Central Criminal Court charged with the kidnap, rape, and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard. Image: AP]

Met Police officer Wayne Couzens, who was handed a whole life sentence, abducted marketing executive Everard on the street in south London on March 3, last year, at about 21:30 BST while she was walking home from a friend's house in Clapham. The ex-officer detained the victim on a false COVID-19 restrictions breach showing a warrant card. He first restrained her with police handcuffs and later transported to Dover in Kent in a hire car in fabricated detention, which the prosecutors labelled "devastating, tragic and wholly brutal”. 

[Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick makes a statement to the media outside the Old Bailey in London. Image: AP]

UK Prime Minister on Friday addressed Britain, as he told reporters, ”I want to make it clear that I do believe in the police, I do think that we can trust the police and I think the police do a wonderful, wonderful job.” 

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on Friday, told a presser that he thinks there will be “hundreds of thousands of police officers, let alone myself, up and down the country who will be absolutely heartsick by the appalling murder of Sarah Everard by a police officer.”

Public outrage on Met Police department for ignoring 'indecent, obscene' texts sent by Couzens on WhatsApp 

Johnson’s remarks came amid the public outrage, angst, and nationwide criticism of the Met Police department for giving leeway to officer Couzens despite gross misconduct over a police WhatsApp group with his male colleagues as he sent messages about women described of "inappropriate nature”. Two of the officers, who worked for the Metropolitan Police, along with a former officer are also being investigated in the case and facing criminal charges for alleged breach of Section 127 of the Communications Act which makes sending messages that are "grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character over a public electronic communications network” a crime in the UK. Met Police chief Cressida Dick has also come under fire with the public demanding his resignation after the nerve-racking rape-murder case of Everard’s. 

Lord Justice Fulford stated that there had been "significant planning and premeditation”, the British press reported. Couzens, a parliamentary and diplomatic protection officer who had finished his  US embassy shift for 12 hours on the morning he committed a crime, had particularly headed out looking for a young woman to kidnap and rape during his COVID-19 patrols, the judge was quoted saying by the British media during his sentencing remarks.

Sentenced officer fabricated plot, said he delivered victim to 'European gang' 

The 48-year-old, an officer in service since 2002, strangled Everard with his police belt while he raped and murdered her, later dumping the body at 02:31 and heading to his service station, where he reportedly bought a drink. The next day, the judge concluded that the Met police officer bought petrol and burnt Everard’s body in his fridge, later dumping her remains in two rubble bags in a pond near an area of woodland, reports revealed. The British media reported that he went about with normal mundane activities and was detained at his home in Deal.

At a police interview, the now sentenced police officer had faked a plot, telling that he was being threatened by an Eastern European gang who were asking to "deliver another girl" after he had underpaid a prostitute, and therefore, he alleged, that he had kidnapped Everard off the street. Couzens claimed that he had handed over Everard to three men in Kent who had arrived in a white van while she was alive, a claim that the prosecutors could not establish, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Image: AP