Plainclothes Cops 'Will Video Call Colleagues' to Confirm ID When Stopping Women

Police in London have been criticised after another attempt to restore public trust in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard by serving police officer Wayne Couzens.

Plainclothes officers stopping a lone woman will now have to video-call a uniformed officer to verify their identity, Metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick has announced. But critics have pointed out that Couzens was a serving officer at the time of Everard’s murder, and questioned how effective this proposal would be.

A spokesperson for campaigning organisation Sisters Uncut said, “The Met's latest PR stunt would be laughable if it wasn't so frightening – this is what we've come to expect from an organisation responsible for 399 deaths in custody over the past 3 decades. Are we expected to believe that Sarah Everard would have been saved by a facetime call to Wayne Couzens’s colleagues?”

A spokesperson for Reclaim These Streets, a group set up in March to organise a vigil for Everard said, “This is clearly a powerplay and sadly a misjudged act to try and repair the broken relationship between women and our city's police. If a police officer wants to subvert justice and break the law, this is not a deterrent. They can just refuse to call the control room. The change that has to happen is deep and cultural, not just plasters that cover up the cracks of systemic misogyny.”

Dick told City Hall that “the onus is on the officer to make lone women feel safe.”

“Because 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 XYZ’ and so on,” she said.

This would be a “quick and easy way for an officer to reassure women,” she said. It would be “instigated by the officer, not by a woman having to do this,” she said.

The Met’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said: “It is very unusual for a lone plain-clothed officer to engage with a lone woman. It is simply not how we usually operate but there are some rare circumstances where this could happen and we want to give all the reassurance we can.

“We know we need to regain women’s trust and we fully accept that the onus is on us to verify we are who we say we are and that we are acting appropriately – that’s why we’ve introduced this system.

“We hope that being able to see and speak to a uniformed colleague in what will very visibly be a police operations room, and know that there is a proper police record of the encounter, will provide the reassurance that we understand is necessary.”

Everard, a 33-year-old woman, was walking home in March this year after visiting a friend in Clapham, South London, when Couzens used his police ID to falsely arrest her before he raped and murdered her. Couzens was given a whole-life sentence for the murder last month, with no chance of parole. The sentence means that Couzens, 48, will likely die in prison.

After the sentencing, police caused outrage by suggesting that women stopped by lone police officers should “wave down a bus” or “call 999” if they are unsure of the officer’s true identity.

London Assembly member Caroline Russell said that the new advice was a “vast improvement”, but that it would not have helped in the Everard case.

“Video call identity confirmation of a lone police officer clearly helps officers to reassure Londoners about their credentials when working alone, but it wouldn’t necessarily help in rare cases like Sarah Everard’s, as the call needs to be initiated by the officer,” she said.

"However, it is a vast improvement from the Met’s initial advice to flag down a bus if stopped by a lone police officer, which baffled and infuriated so many Londoners.