A student whose photograph went viral after her arrest at a vigil following the murder of Sarah Everard said she “almost cried” when she heard Dame Cressida Dick had resigned as Metropolitan police commissioner.
Patsy Stevenson was pinned to the ground at the vigil on 13 March at Clapham Common, south London, for Everard, who had been kidnapped while walking home before being raped and murdered by the serving Met officer Wayne Couzens.
The force was criticised over its policing of the vigil, during which women were bundled to the ground and arrested for breaching Covid-19 laws.
In a Sunday Times interview, published ahead of first anniversary of her arrest, Stevenson, 28, a physics student, said she “stopped in the street and almost cried” when she heard the commissioner had resigned.
She said: “I thought, thank God. Not only has she presided over a force where systemic misogyny and racism has been allowed to thrive, she’s failed to ensure the perpetrators are prosecuted. But the fact that she’s out doesn’t fix what’s going on. This can’t be a token gesture. There has to be top-down, radical change.”
Stevenson, who has since launched legal action against the police, said she was forced to the ground, handcuffed and arrested under Covid-19 laws, the same laws Couzens had falsely used to arrest and handcuff Everard as she walked home. She said officers used “brute force” to intimidate her and other women that night, adding she had previously trusted the force and thought police brutality was “rare”.
“It felt like they were telling us not to mess with them. I’d always trusted the police, so it was unexpected and shocking,” Stevenson said. “I could never have imagined something like that could happen to me … I was confused and terrified.
“All the time I was being handcuffed and taken away I was thinking, this is how Couzens got Sarah into his car. I knew they were going to put me in their van but I didn’t know what they were going to do to me or what they could get away with.”
After the photograph of her arrest went viral, she said she experienced abuse on social media – “really, really in-depth death threats and extremely twisted misogyny from men who said they knew where I lived and they were coming to kidnap me. I don’t think I slept for more than an hour all that week.”
Stevenson said her Tinder profile was liked by 50 serving Met officers. She said she knew they were serving police officers “because they were in uniform! And their bio says: ‘I’ve got handcuffs and a baton and they’re not the fluffy kind. Wink.’ I mean what are they doing?” she told the newspaper.
She said she was continually worried about her own security, had been followed home by random strangers and had had to move house. “After the vigil, a very nice decent police officer came round and gave me a barricade for my door and window locks, and I carry a vibrating alarm wherever I go,” she said.
She still has a fear of police officers, saying: “I cross the road to avoid them,” and said she had nightmares of being forced to the ground, unable to breathe. “The feeling of being physically overwhelmed as they surrounded me will stay with me for ever,” she said.
Stevenson is contesting a £200 fine for breaking Covid laws.
Couzens is serving a whole-life order for his crimes, while prosecutors are separately considering charging three of his former colleagues over allegations they shared racist and misogynistic messages with him.
