Sarah Everard: Cressida Dick reacts to Couzens’ life sentence

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This comes more than seven months after the murder of Sarah Everard, by serving Police Officer Wayne Couzens. The new measures, known as “safe connection”, will force plainclothes police officers to confirm their identity and prove they are genuine on the “rare occasion” they need to speak to a lone woman. The encounter will also be recorded.

Ms Dick said she hoped the measures would provide reassurance to women.

“What I can say today is we are launching our ‘safe connection’, as we call it, which allows a woman who is stopped by such a police officer immediately to have verification that this is a police officer”, she said.

“My plainclothes officers will call into a control room, they will then have a video call with a sergeant in uniform who will say ‘Yes, that’s so and so, he’s PC X, Y, Z’ – so a quick, easy way, which again is instigated by the officer, not by the woman having to ask for this… which I hope will be one way people can feel reassured.”

The video call will be made through the officer’s mobile phone or alternatively, if they are off duty and do not have their device with them, they will provide the woman with a telephone number, so she can visually call the operations room directly.

All operation rooms have been provided with a dedicated mobile device, which can make and receive the calls using FaceTime, WhatsApp, Skype, Zoom and Google Duo.

Anyone stopped by an officer can also call 999 directly to ask for confirmation of the officer’s identity.

The significant new measures are a response to the revelation that police officer Wayne Couzens used his warrant card and handcuffs to kidnap Ms Everard in March this year.

The firearms officer staged a fake arrest, citing lockdown restrictions, as the 33-year-old marketing executive walked home from a friend’s house in South London, before going on to rape and murder her.

The Metropolitan police faced controversy in the immediate aftermath of Couzens’ sentencing after they issued advice telling women to flag down a bus or passer-by if stopped by a police officer they did not trust.

Women’s groups accused the Metropolitan Police of victim-blaming.

Chief executive of domestic abuse charity Refuge, Ruth Davidson, said: “Time and again, the Metropolitan Police have responded to incidents of gender-based violence by telling women to change their behaviour.

“Time and again, the responsibility is placed on women to protect themselves.

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“This is simply not good enough. Police forces across the country must be prepared for a fundamental shift and overhaul in their attitudes towards women, and root out the misogyny that is at the heart of these failings.”

Ms Dick said the Met had reviewed its widely-criticised safety advice, telling the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on Wednesday: “I want to be clear: the onus is on the officer to deal professionally with the person they are speaking to and in the very unusual circumstance a plain clothes police officer is talking to a lone female – which is likely to be extremely unusual in London – we would expect them to go to every effort, first of all to recognise the woman may feel uncomfortable, to explain themselves well, to identify themselves well…to call up a colleague.

“Some safety advice – I have to say when, in a press conference, pressed, pressed, pressed – was given out if all else fails and you’re really concerned you may want to get assistance.

“I completely understand why that ended up as the headline. It was not intended and it is not how we see things and yes, we have reviewed it.

“The problem here is men’s violence towards women, the problem is not for the women, or the woman, it’s really not.”

Couzens worked in the Metropolitan Police’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command, working at the American embassy at the time he raped and murdered Ms Everard.

The married father-of-two, from Deal, Kent, was sentenced to a rare whole-life sentence at the Old Bailey in London last month.

Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime in London, Sophie Linden, said that she has seen a spike in the number of women and girls coming forward to report sexual violence in the wake of Ms Evard’s murder.

She said: “What we’ve seen is many more younger girls and young women coming forward over the last year, possibly it’s a hypothesis after the case of Sarah Everard and the Everyone’s Invited campaign.

“We’ve seen a real increase in young teenage women coming forward and reporting, which is to be welcomed but of course concerning.”

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