Prime Minister urges women to ‘trust police’
BORIS Johnson has urged women to trust police while acknowledging problems in the criminal justice system in relation to female complaints, rape and sexual violence.
The Prime Minister said “too many women are spending too long” waiting for their cases to be heard, adding the UK Government will “stop at nothing” to make sure more rapists are jailed.
His comments come after Metropolitan Police firearms officer Wayne Couzens 48, was handed a whole life sentence at the Old Bailey on Thursday for murdering Sarah Everard by Lord Justice Fulford, who said his “warped, selfish and brutal” offences had eroded confidence in the police.
Ms Everard, 33, was walking home from a friend’s house in Clapham, south London, on the evening of March 3 when she was kidnapped, raped and murdered by Couzens, 48.
Mr Johnson told the BBC yesterday: “My view is that the police do – overwhelmingly – a wonderful job and what I want is the public, and women in particular, girls and young women, women of all ages, to trust the police. They are overwhelmingly trustworthy.”
Later, Mr Johnson said the criminal justice system has not been quick enough to act on reports of sexual violence against women and girls.
He said: “The problem is that there is an endemic difficulty in getting the criminal justice system to deal with these complaints fast enough and sometimes to see them take them seriously enough.
“There are delays taking place at every stage in the process. You know the reasons – it’s all the complexities to do with people’s mobile phones, the evidence that’s produced by the defence, and all that kind of stuff.
“But, in the end, that is no excuse. We have to have these complaints properly dealt with.
“We have to have a situation in which women know that their reporting of rape, sexual, domestic violence is going to be properly taken care of.
“So, we’re investing massively in all that stuff to make the streets safer, and some of these most terrible, biggest, dangerous crime types are actually coming down.”
“So, we’re focusing on both ends of the process. But it’s in the middle, it’s the bit with the criminal justice system, between the reporting and the conviction.
“We need to contract it, we need to give women the confidence that their complaints are being taken seriously.”
Mr Johnson added: “We are putting £25m more today into CCTV, into street lighting, 10,000 more police already recruited as part of our 20,000, and we’re toughening the sentences for serious sexual offences.
Asked whether the public could expect conviction rates to go up, the Prime Minister replied: “We’re going to work as hard as we can to achieve that.
“We have to work with the prosecutors, with the police, with the criminal justice system, and that’s what we are going to do.”
Meanwhile, the UK Government’s Minister for Women and Equalities has admitted she finds walking home at night “concerning” and females are “fearful” of going out.
Liz Truss, who is also the Foreign Secretary, rejected the assertion that the criminal justice system is “institutionally misogynistic” because of the poor conviction rate in rape and sexual assault cases.
“I wouldn’t use those words,” she told the Telegraph Chopper’s Politics podcast event. “But what I would say is, as a woman, I do find walking home at night concerning.
“I don’t like that air of concern. I do think as women, generally we are more fearful of going out and that is fundamentally wrong.
“It’s something we have to change about our society.”
Asked whether she had ever been the victim of sexual harassment or inappropriate behaviour, Ms Truss said: “I’m in the fortunate position of being in a senior position so I don’t think anyone would try it on in that way and if they did they would get very short shrift.
“But I have observed the way women get treated some times. I think it’s got better, I started my career in the mid-90s, I think we’ve seen improvements since then.
“But it is definitely the case that women are more fearful of going out at night, of going to isolated areas and that inevitably holds people back from enjoying life to the full. We need to address that.”
Couzens was said in court to have been “attracted to brutal sexual pornography” as far back as 2002.
The police watchdog previously said he was linked to a flashing incident in 2015 and two more incidents just days before he killed Ms Everard.
Parm Sandhu, an ex-chief superintendent at the Met, said urgent action is needed to restore public confidence in the police.
She told Sky News: “Everybody who works in policing now should be re-vetted. Those people who got through the vetting procedure 20 years ago, 30 years ago, all of them.
“Every single person needs to be reviewed and if anything comes up in their past – it doesn’t have to be a conviction, it just needs to be come to notice, because this man did come to notice.
“So, every person should be revetted and reassessed as to whether or not they are safe to be working with members of the community and members of the public.
“It needs to be done now as an urgent measure to reassure the public and rebuild the trust and confidence that policing has lost, but it needs to be done on a regular basis so that we don’t have anybody that even comes close to the actions of Wayne Couzens.”