Saturday, March 12, 2022
Court rules Met police breached rights of organisers of Sarah Everard vigil
Anybody who doubted that the decision to oust Cressida Dick as Metropolitan Police Commissioner was the right one, must surely be reassured by the decision of the high court to rule in favour of the organisers of a planned vigil for Sarah Everard.
As the Guardian reports, the Metropolitan police breached the rights of the organisers of the planned vigil in the way they handled the planned event:
Reclaim These Streets (RTS) proposed a socially distanced vigil for the 33-year-old, who was murdered by a serving Met officer, Wayne Couzens, near to where she went missing in Clapham, south London, in March last year.
Four women who founded RTS and planned the vigil brought a legal challenge against the force over its handling of the event, which was also intended to be a protest about violence against women.
They withdrew from organising the vigil after being told by the force they would face fines of £10,000 each and possible prosecution if the event went ahead, and a spontaneous vigil and protest took place instead.
At a two-day hearing in January, Jessica Leigh, Anna Birley, Henna Shah and Jamie Klingler argued that decisions made by the force in advance of the planned vigil amounted to a breach of their human rights to freedom of speech and assembly, and say the force did not assess the potential risk to public health.
In a judgment handed down on Friday, Lord Justice Warby and Mr Justice Holgate ruled in favour of RTS, finding that the Met’s decisions in the run-up to the event were “not in accordance with the law”.
In a statement outside the Royal Courts of Justice on behalf of the four women who organised the vigil, their solicitor Theodora Middleton said: “Today’s judgment is a victory for women.
“Last March, women’s voices were silenced. Today’s judgment conclusively shows that the police were wrong to silence us.
“The decisions and actions by the Met police in the run-up to the planned vigil for Sarah Everard last year were unlawful and the judgment sets a powerful precedent for protest rights.
“We came together one year and one day ago to organise a vigil on Clapham Common because Sarah Everard went missing from our neighbourhood. We felt sad and afraid.
“We were angry that women still weren’t safe and we were tired of the burden to stay safe always weighing on our shoulders.”
In a summary of the ruling, Lord Justice Warby said: “The relevant decisions of the [Met] were to make statements at meetings, in letters, and in a press statement, to the effect that the Covid-19 regulations in force at the time meant that holding the vigil would be unlawful.
“Those statements interfered with the claimants’ rights because each had a ‘chilling effect’ and made at least some causal contribution to the decision to cancel the vigil.
“None of the [force’s] decisions was in accordance with the law; the evidence showed that the [force] failed to perform its legal duty to consider whether the claimants might have a reasonable excuse for holding the gathering, or to conduct the fact-specific proportionality assessment required in order to perform that duty.”
I suppose we can hope that the new Commissioner is a bit more sensitive to democratic rights, but unless there is a fundamental reform of the Met, its priorities and the way it operates, I am not holding my breath.
As the Guardian reports, the Metropolitan police breached the rights of the organisers of the planned vigil in the way they handled the planned event:
Reclaim These Streets (RTS) proposed a socially distanced vigil for the 33-year-old, who was murdered by a serving Met officer, Wayne Couzens, near to where she went missing in Clapham, south London, in March last year.
Four women who founded RTS and planned the vigil brought a legal challenge against the force over its handling of the event, which was also intended to be a protest about violence against women.
They withdrew from organising the vigil after being told by the force they would face fines of £10,000 each and possible prosecution if the event went ahead, and a spontaneous vigil and protest took place instead.
At a two-day hearing in January, Jessica Leigh, Anna Birley, Henna Shah and Jamie Klingler argued that decisions made by the force in advance of the planned vigil amounted to a breach of their human rights to freedom of speech and assembly, and say the force did not assess the potential risk to public health.
In a judgment handed down on Friday, Lord Justice Warby and Mr Justice Holgate ruled in favour of RTS, finding that the Met’s decisions in the run-up to the event were “not in accordance with the law”.
In a statement outside the Royal Courts of Justice on behalf of the four women who organised the vigil, their solicitor Theodora Middleton said: “Today’s judgment is a victory for women.
“Last March, women’s voices were silenced. Today’s judgment conclusively shows that the police were wrong to silence us.
“The decisions and actions by the Met police in the run-up to the planned vigil for Sarah Everard last year were unlawful and the judgment sets a powerful precedent for protest rights.
“We came together one year and one day ago to organise a vigil on Clapham Common because Sarah Everard went missing from our neighbourhood. We felt sad and afraid.
“We were angry that women still weren’t safe and we were tired of the burden to stay safe always weighing on our shoulders.”
In a summary of the ruling, Lord Justice Warby said: “The relevant decisions of the [Met] were to make statements at meetings, in letters, and in a press statement, to the effect that the Covid-19 regulations in force at the time meant that holding the vigil would be unlawful.
“Those statements interfered with the claimants’ rights because each had a ‘chilling effect’ and made at least some causal contribution to the decision to cancel the vigil.
“None of the [force’s] decisions was in accordance with the law; the evidence showed that the [force] failed to perform its legal duty to consider whether the claimants might have a reasonable excuse for holding the gathering, or to conduct the fact-specific proportionality assessment required in order to perform that duty.”
I suppose we can hope that the new Commissioner is a bit more sensitive to democratic rights, but unless there is a fundamental reform of the Met, its priorities and the way it operates, I am not holding my breath.
