Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice

This hour-long BBC documentary retells the events surrounding the events surrounding the tragic rape and murder of Sarah Everard, an innocent young woman living in London who was tricked by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens a 48-year-old married man with deviant tendencies, into being handcuffed by him and driven to a remote location where she sadly met her end.

Her initial "out-of-character" disappearance in London after dining with a friend, sparked immediate media interest and the case soon became national headline news. The investigating police happened on a vital piece of dashcam footage from a passing bus showing Sarah apparently being arrested by a plain-clothes police officer, Couzens as it turned out, corroborated by a car passenger who added the important detail that she was actually put in handcuffs, a rare occurrence. This happened during COVID lockdown but nonetheless seemed highly suspicious and when he was traced via his car, Couzens was quickly arrested and charged.

However, shocking revelations soon followed that not only was he a serving police officer but also had just five days earlier exposed himself at a fast food restaurant, itself the latest in a series of similar offences going back many years.

We're shown the dramatic impact of these incredible twists in the response of London's female population in organising a public demonstration against the police, chanting "Arrest Your Own", which attracted an unsympathetic and heavy-handed response from the police sent to disperse the crowd.

The evidence against Couzens was incontrovertible and his guilty plea resulted in a whole of life conviction but many questions remain about police recruitment, how Couzens' previous offences apparently went either unnoticed or unpunished and the deeper question of how rife mysogyny was in the Metropolitan Police. The chief of police, Cressida Dick, tried to pass off Couzens as "a bad 'un", i.e. A one-off, but soon afterwards other shocking tales of serving officers dismissive attitudes towards women, including another case of rape, came to light, which eventually caused Dick to resign in disgrace.

There was understandably no participation by any of Sarah's family in the programme (outside of read-out Victim Impact Statements) and there was also none by anyone who was related to Couzens or even friends or acquaintances of the monster.

The story instead is mostly told by the investigating police and journalists, with much reliance on TV news bulletins of the time. I could have down without the sometimes confusing timeline calendar which spun back and forth in time, but otherwise this was a suitably sombre and respectful review of a truly disturbing case which rocked the nation and undoubtedly sullied the status of the capital's police force.

As ever, the big organisation under scrutiny, this time the Met, last time it was the Post Office of course, duly issued carefully worded after-the-fact statements of contrition and apology, promising that lessons have been learned and that this won't and can't happen again.

Let's hope that's true but experience has shown us that this doesn't always happen. Time will tell.