UK police face backlash over handling of Everard vigil

London's Metropolitan Police is facing an angry backlash from the public and politicians over its handling of a vigil held in the capital on Saturday following the killing of a woman.

Britain's Home Secretary Priti Patel has asked for a "full report" from the police force, known as the Met, on its tactics in handling the vigil held in memory of Sarah Everard who was murdered after being kidnapped off a main street in south London on March 3.

A serving Met officer has been charged with Everard's kidnap and murder.

Video footage from Saturday night shared on social media showed police arresting and dragging women away from the scene of the vigil at Clapham Common, and of officers handcuffing a woman as she lay screaming on the floor.

The Home Secretary wrote on Twitter, "Some of the footage circulating online from the vigil at Clapham Common is upsetting," Patel wrote on Twitter. "I have asked the Metropolitan Police for a full report on what happened".

Late on Saturday, the Met defended its actions, saying crowds posed a risk of transmitting the novel coronavirus. Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball said in statement: "Police must act for people's safety, this is the only responsible thing to do."

Last week, police had denied permission for a vigil at London's Clapham Common at the open space, near where Everard was last seen alive, citing regulations to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Despite the ban, people had gathered peacefully at the site throughout the day, to pay their respects.

In social media posts, London's mayor Sadiq Khan and the leader of the opposition Labour Party Keir Starmer both criticized the way the vigil was handled.

Starmer said: "The scenes in Clapham this evening are deeply disturbing. Women came together to mourn Sarah Everard – they should have been able to do so peacefully. I share their anger and upset about how this should have been handled. This was not the way to police this protest.

Khan said the scenes were "unacceptable" and that he was "urgently seeking an explanation" from the Met's top officer, Commissioner Cressida Dick.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey called for her to resign over the "utterly disgraceful" scenes. In an open letter to Dick posted on social media he said: "This was a complete abject tactical and moral failure on the part of the police." He added: "Your officers should have been standing in solidarity with those on Clapham Common tonight not being ordered to disrupt this display of grief and peaceful protest."

Davey's comments were backed by the former deputy assistant commissioner of the Met, and member of the Liberal Democrats, Brian Paddick, who told Times Radio: "This was from the beginning a bad decision by the police and unfortunately what we saw was inevitable."

Conservative member of Parliament Caroline Nokes said: "In this country we police by consent — not by trampling the tributes to a woman who was murdered and dragging other women to the ground. Badly misjudged by #metpolice."

The murder of Everard has provoked an outpouring of grief and dismay in the United Kingdom at the failure of police and wider society to tackle violence against women, Reuters reported.

Labour's shadow domestic violence minister, Jess Phillips told Sky New's Sophy Ridge on Sunday program that it would not make women more or less safe if Dick resigned. She said: "We don't need just to be angry, we need action."

She said there were "so many missed opportunities" for police to have worked with organizers of the vigil to ensure it could go ahead safely.

Home Office minister, Victoria Atkins, resisted calls for Dick to resign, and urged people to wait for "explanations" for the officers' behavior from the commissioner.