by Charlotte Fox
On 10th March 2021, the body of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, was found in a builder’s bag in woodlands in South London. It is believed that 7 days before, she was kidnapped “unlawfully and by force” and murdered by a senior police officer, Wayne Couzens while walking home from a friend’s house. A vigil to commemorate Everard occurred a few days later, but the police’s use of force while dealing with it has been slammed by critics, causing a renewed focus on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
This Bill, according to the official government website, acts as a “reset of the scales” between “individual rights and the general interests of the community”. Although the right to protest is one of the chief principles in a democratic nation such as the UK, it is necessary to consider the extent to which disruption caused by protesters is acceptable, especially if this disruption involves breaking the law. Therefore, the Bill aims to help police achieve the correct balance between the rights of protesters and the rights of the rest of the public to not experience disruption due to the protest. Many politicians have claimed that although it is “tough,” it includes reforms that are essential for the safety of everyone in society. Many are concerned that the Bill will be used to restrict citizens’ right to protest, but the National Police Chief’s Council believes that current legislation regarding public order is unmodernised, and therefore non-applicable to the violent and disruptive forms of protests that occur today. For example, many protest methods have negative effects on the unrelated public, such as blocking public transport, which prevents people from getting to their place of work, and even stalling emergency services, which can cause loss of life. Also, the yearly budget of London’s violent crime taskforce is around £18 million, but policing operations for protests can take up huge proportions of this (for context, £37 million (over double the yearly budget) was spent on policing two of Extinction Rebellion’s protests in 2019). This is unfair for the general taxpayer who has no association with these protests, and for people living in dangerous areas who rely on this funding for their own security.
In the context of Sarah Everard’s vigil, violence occurred due to disagreements about whether the event itself was legal due to the global pandemic of coronavirus. The women organising it had been warned by Met Police commanders that a protest would be a breach of the coronavirus lockdown rules. The reason why this situation is complex is because the coronavirus rules are very ambiguous, meaning that both the police and the general public are unsure as to what is actually allowed. At the time, gatherings of more than two people were not allowed, but there were some cases in which this law did not apply. Confusion was caused because it was not specified whether a protest on a “major issue of public importance” counts as one of these exceptions. When people turned up at the vigil and refused to leave after numerous more warnings from the police, physical violence occurred, arguably for the greater good in terms of attempting to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
Since the criticism of policing techniques at the vigil, government plans to introduce new ways to prevent inappropriate misconduct from occurring at protests. One way is by using harsh punishment as a deterrent. During the Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020, 172 officers experienced assault by a minority of violent protesters. Under the Bill, the maximum penalty for the assault of an emergency worker will be doubled from one to two years, in the hope that the number of police officers assaulted while handling protests will decrease.
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