Two senior judges are due to give their ruling over whether the Metropolitan Police breached the rights of the organisers of a planned vigil for Sarah Everard with its handling of the planned event.
Reclaim These Streets (RTS) proposed a socially-distanced vigil for the 33-year-old, who was murdered by former 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.
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. The High Court was told that senior officers in the force considered that “perceived reputational risk”, rather than public health, was the biggest “threat” when the force decided to “effectively veto” the vigil.
