A WOMAN who was pictured being arrested at Sarah Everard vigil says “50”cops have since contacted her on Tinder and “threatened kidnap”.
Patsy Stevenson, 28, said the officers approached her the dating app after she was handcuffed at the vigil on March 13.
She said they knew she was “fearful of police” and had done it “for a reason”.
The Met said its officers “must abide by our high standards of professional behaviour, both on and off duty”.
Hundreds attended the vigil on Clapham Common in south London following the death of Ms Everard, who was murdered by Met Police officer Wayne Couzens after he abducted her while she was walking home.
The event had been cancelled after the Met said it would be illegal under lockdown restrictions.
Ms Stevenson said the event was “a turning point”, where “everyone realised we actually we all go through the same things”, but the “sombre atmosphere… turned very scary very quickly” after police started trying to disperse the crowd.
She was handcuffed and held down by two officers, and was also issued with a £200 fine.
She has since launched legal action against the Met Police over the arrest.
‘DEATH THREATS’
She said that since the arrest, “about 50” police officers had approached her via the dating app.
“They were all in uniform on their profiles or it said ‘I’m a police officer’,” she said.
“I do not understand why someone would do that.
“It is almost like an intimidation thing, saying ‘look we can see you’, and that, to me, is terrifying.
“They know what I went through and they know that I’m fearful of police and they’ve done that for a reason.”
Ms Stevenson said she had also become the focus of internet conspiracies since her arrest and “can’t count the amount of death threats I’ve had”.
She said people had claimed she was a “crisis actor” paid to attend the vigil and get arrested to legitimise attacks on the police.
She added that many of the threats had been about kidnapping her.
“Now there’s always that fear when I’m out and I see someone staring at me,” she said.
“I just want to be able to live the way you live without fear.
“But then again, I’m a woman.”
Ms Stevenson said she was not “anti-police” and had reported the threats, which are being investigated, though had not reported the dating app contacts.
She said the police needed to start “taking accountability” for officers’ actions and the Met’s advice that women should flag down a bus if they have concerns when stopped by an officer was “part of the problem”.
“Stop telling women how to change their behaviour just to stay alive,” she said.
“If they started looking into it properly and… listening to people’s concerns and then enacting change, we would be able to trust them more.”
The Met said Ms Stevenson should “please contact us and provide us with more information so we can work to establish if any MPS officer is involved [and] whether any misconduct may have occurred.”
Met Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, who has rejected calls to resign, confirmed on Monday there would be an independent review into the force’s standards and culture and Home Secretary Priti Patel also said an inquiry into the “systematic failures” that allowed Wayne Couzens to continue to be a police officer would be launched.
It comes as another Met officer from the same unit as killer Wayne Couzens raped a woman he met on Tinder, a court heard.
PC David Carrick, 46, has been suspended from the Met’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command and the court was told he “emphatically denies” attacking the woman after they shared drinks at two pubs in St Albans.
Carrick, who was off-duty at the time, then raped the woman at a Premier Inn in St Albans, it was said.
And Wayne Couzens is said to have showed off a prostitute at a hotel party with Met colleagues.
Sarah Everard’s killer brazenly called her his “bit of brass”.
Source: The Sun
