Human remains found in the search for missing London woman Sarah Everard
Police scrambled to reassure the public after an officer from an elite unit was arrested for the alleged kidnap and murder of a woman who vanished on her way home, and investigators searching for her found human remains.
Hope faded in the search for Sarah Everard, 33, after the Metropolitan police commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, announced that police had made the discovery in woodland in Kent.
Dick said the marketing executive’s disappearance from Clapham, southwest London, on Wednesday last week was “every family’s worst nightmare”, while the arrest of a serving officer had sent “shockwaves and anger through the public and through the Met”.
PC Wayne Couzens, 48, was arrested on Tuesday at his home in Deal, Kent, on suspicion of kidnapping Everard, who vanished after leaving a friend’s house at around 9pm on 3 March and beginning a 50-minute walk home.
After searches in Kent, with remains found in woodland in Ashford, he was arrested on Wednesday for her murder and also on suspicion of a separate allegation of indecent exposure. Couzens is in the elite parliamentary and diplomatic protection command, and his main role is protecting diplomatic premises. Officers in this role are usually armed and vetted.
Announcing the officer’s arrest at midnight on Tuesday, Met assistant commissioner Nick Ephgrave described the news as shocking and accepted that it would damage public confidence.
“This is a serious and significant development in our search for Sarah and the fact that the man who’s been arrested is a serving Metropolitan police officer is both shocking and deeply disturbing. I recognise the significant concern this will cause,” he said.
On Wednesday, Dick added: “The news today that it was a Metropolitan police officer who was arrested on suspicion of Sarah’s murder has sent shockwaves and anger through the public and through the Met. I speak on behalf of all my colleagues when I say that we are utterly appalled at this dreadful, dreadful news. Our job is to patrol the streets and to protect people.”
Officers from Scotland Yard’s homicide command had been combing through CCTV and video footage from devices such as video door bells for any clue about Everard’s whereabouts.
Police chiefs were said to be shocked when the investigation team told them they had reason to arrest a serving officer with the Met. On Wednesday officers were searching locations in London as well as a home in Deal, 80 miles from the capital, and woodland near Ashford, 50 miles away, including an abandoned paintball centre.
The officer was first arrested on Tuesday night on suspicion of the abduction of Everard, alongside a woman in her 30s who was detained at the same location on suspicion of aiding an offender. Both were taken into custody.
Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality party, said the Met should not oversee the case, given the arrest of a serving officer on suspicion of murder.
She said: “This case has affected women right across the capital and across the country but I cannot begin to imagine the pain that Sarah’s friends and family are going through. The fact that a police officer has been arrested on suspicion of murder makes it all the more frightening, and it is imperative that the case is now taken over by a separate police force. We have to do this right.”
Seeking to reassure the public, the Met commissioner said: “I know Londoners will want to know that it is thankfully incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted from our streets. I completely understand that despite this, women in London and the wider public – particularly those in the area where Sarah went missing – will be worried and may well be feeling scared.”
London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, said: “I know how shocked and worried Londoners are by Sarah’s disappearance and the developments in the case.
“I want to assure Sarah’s family, and everyone in our city, that the police are doing absolutely everything they can …
Londoners will continue to see more police officers on our streets continuing their investigation and carrying out reassurance patrols in the area where Sarah went missing a week ago.”
Everard, who was described as 5ft 4in with blond hair and of slim build, was last seen wearing a green rain jacket, navy blue trousers with a white diamond pattern, turquoise and orange trainers and a white beanie hat as she walked from the Clapham Junction area towards her home in Brixton after meeting a friend.
In a statement last week, Everard’s family said her disappearance was out of character. “With every day that goes by we are getting more worried about Sarah. She is always in regular contact with us and with her friends and it is totally out of character for her to disappear like this. We long to see her and want nothing more than for her to be found safe and well.
“We are so grateful to the police and all our friends for all they are doing. We are desperate for news and if anyone knows anything about what has happened to her, we would urge you to please come forward and speak to the police. No piece of information is too insignificant.”
Police activity since Tuesday evening intensified and focused on an address in Deal. David Ladd, 48, said he saw two people arrested there at about 10pm on Tuesday. He said: “It was all cordoned with unmarked police cars and the police were all over the house. They arrested two people. They brought them out and put them in two separate cars and took them off.
“They were in and out the house for about an hour and a half to two hours. Then a normal police car turned up and the others left. They’ve stayed there all night.” Police removed a car from an address in Deal for examination.
In a statement, the Met said: “The man, who is aged in his 40s, was arrested on the evening of Tuesday 9 March on suspicion of kidnap. Today, Wednesday 10 March, he has been further arrested on suspicion of murder and a separate allegation of indecent exposure.
“The man is a serving Metropolitan police officer in the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command. His primary role was uniformed patrol duties of diplomatic premises. A woman, who is aged in her 30s, was also arrested on the evening of 9 March on suspicion of assisting an offender. She remains in custody.”
The Met has referred the case to the police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which said: “Following assessment we determined that both conduct referrals relating to the kidnap/murder and indecent exposure should remain under local investigation by the force.
“We have also received a mandatory referral in relation to the actions of police after Sarah was reported missing. This is still being assessed to determine what further action may be required from us. As there is an ongoing and fast-moving Met police investigation, it would not be appropriate to say more at this time.”
Joe Biden reflected recently on the last time a Democratic administration had to rescue an economy left in tatters by a Republican president.
“The economists told us we literally saved America from a depression,” Biden told the House Democratic Caucus last week. “But we didn’t adequately explain what we had done. Barack was so modest; he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap’. I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time. I’m not going to take a victory lap.’ And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”
The 46th US president is often lauded for his humility but don’t expect him to repeat Obama’s mistake. Once his $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill is signed, he is set to take an extended victory lap by travelling the country to promote it.
Biden will have short and long sales pitches. First, that help is on the way after the hellish year of a pandemic that has killed more than 528,000 people in the US and put many millions out of work.
The stimulus, among the biggest in history, includes $400bn to fund $1,400 direct payments to most Americans (unlike Donald Trump, Biden’s signature will not appear on the cheques), $350bn in aid to state and local governments and increased funding for vaccine distribution.
Politically, it is an open goal. The risks of inaction were immense; the risks of action are modest. Opinion polls show that three in four Americans support the stimulus, making congressional Republicans’ implacable opposition all the more jarring. But given that voters tend to have short memories – academic research and midterm election results suggest that Obama got little credit for the 2009 rescue – Biden is wise to press home his advantage.
Second, he will also be on a mission to restore faith in government. Confidence in it “has been plummeting since the late 60s to what it is now”, Biden noted in his remarks last week. His legislation, called the American Rescue Plan, can correct that with the biggest expansion of the welfare state in decades.
Advocates say it will cut the number of Americans living in poverty by a third and reduce child poverty by nearly half. It contains, at $31bn, the biggest federal investment in Native American programmes in history. It also delivers the most important legislation for Black farmers in half a century, allocating $5bn through debt relief, grants, education and training.
Jim McGovern, the Democratic congressman who chairs the House rules committee, has said: “This bill attacks inequality and poverty in ways we haven’t seen in a generation.”
The White House has called it “the most progressive piece of legislation in history”. Biden knows better than anyone what that means.
When he was born, in 1942, the president was Franklin Roosevelt, architect of the New Deal, an epic set of programmes, public work projects and financial reforms to provide relief from the Great Depression. When Biden was a student at the University of Delaware, Lyndon Johnson embarked on his project of the “Great Society”, flexing the muscles of government for poverty alleviation, civil rights and environmental protections.
But then came the monumental pushback. As a senator, Biden witnessed the Watergate scandal tarnish the political class as Richard Nixon became the first president to resign. Then came Ronald Reagan and his famous quip: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Reagan oversaw a major tax overhaul in 1986, resulting in cavernous inequality and a massive budget deficit. He described Johnson’s “Great Society” as a fundamental wrong turn and set about dismantling it. Reagan was so successful in making the political weather that Biden himself bought into the ideology.
In 1988 he wrote in a newspaper column: “We are all too familiar with the stories of welfare mothers driving luxury cars and leading lifestyles that mirror the rich and famous. Whether they are exaggerated or not, these stories underlie a broad social concern that the welfare system has broken down – that it only parcels out welfare checks and does nothing to help the poor find productive jobs.”
This orthodoxy held and dominated the political centre ground. In 2017, Trump followed Reagan’s lead with a $1.5tn bill that slashed taxes for corporations and the wealthy, including himself and his allies. That was his first big legislative win; Biden’s could hardly be more of a polar opposite.
The American Rescue Plan is not without disappointments for progressives, notably the lack of a $15-per-hour minimum wage, a harbinger of how difficult an evenly divided Senate will be for Biden to handle. All the more reason to enjoy his victory lap and celebrate that four decades of Reaganism and “trickle down” economics are at an end.