It is our politicians who have rewarded the Met with greater police powers despite the murder of Sarah Everard and the policing of the vigil, which has exposed deeply embedded misogyny within the Met Police internationally,” she added.
“I’m glad that the police have recognised that we had a fundamental right to protest but since then this right has been further eroded and undermined by the Public Order Act. “It has taken over two years to reach this conclusion, it’s been a really tiring and difficult process but it has felt important to push for some form of accountability and justice for myself and all women who attended the vigil to express our anger and grief over the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Metropolitan Police officer,” Stevenson said. In a statement published by Bindmans LLP, Patsy Stevenson said the process had been a “tiring and difficult” one. Police detain Patsy Stevenson at the 2021 vigil on London's Clapham Common. “The MPS has expressed regret that Patsy and Dania’s opportunity to express grief and anger was ‘curtailed by arrest and removal’ and that these legal proceedings have been necessary,” the firm added. “Together with making payments of substantial damages to Dania Al-Obeid and Patsy Stevenson, the MPS has issued an apology,” the statement by law firm Bindmans LLP reads.Īccording to the law firm, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) “acknowledge that women wanted to attend the vigil because they were ‘understandably’ feeling ‘badly let down by the Met’, that the purpose of the vigil was to facilitate public expression of grief and anger, and that people’s presence at it was protected by the fundamental right to protest.” Officers forcibly removed women from the bandstand and some, including Stevenson, were pinned down to the ground. The police force was criticized by women’s rights activists for its heavy handling of protesters towards the end of the event. Strict Covid restrictions were in place at the time.
The vigil took place in Clapham Common, London, in memory of Everard, a 33-year old who was murdered by a serving Met officer while walking home in early March 2021. Two women who were arrested while attending a Sarah Everard vigil in London in 2021 have been paid damages and received an apology from the Metropolitan Police.Ī lawyer’s statement on Thursday confirmed that the London police force had apologized and agreed to pay “substantial” damages to the women, Patsy Stevenson and Dania Al-Obeid.
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