A serving Met Police officer made a string of inappropriate comments about a woman's body, leaving her terrified. Marwa Mohammed said she was shocked to learn PC Andrew Turner had been allowed to keep his job after reporting him for making creepy comments.
The police officer told the 28-year-old mum he "really liked" her, before saying he would "love to conduct a search on her in custody" and also made inappropriate comments about her "shape, size and form" before asking her about plastic surgery. Marwa was so upset by his behaviour, she recorded one of the phone calls the officer had made to her, the Mirror reports.
The shocking story is the latest in a wave of allegations of sexism, bad behaviour and violence directed at the force following the kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard by PC Wayne Couzens in 2020.
While PC Turner was given a final warning after a misconduct panel said his actions were "inappropriate" and "below the standards expected", Marwa said she was shocked that he managed to keep his job and says she has seen him out on patrol since he made the rude comments to her.
According to the Mirror, PC Turner told the young mum his calls to her phone, which he made after finding her confidential information in a police database, were "off the record" before admitting he was "going to cross the line" and that he "really liked her". After reporting their conversation at a police station, Marwa says staff did not “take her seriously” - until she revealed she had recorded his phone call.
Marwa first encountered the officer when he attended an incident she had been involved in on June 8, 2020. The Londoner claimed he began making inappropriate comments on her “shape, size and form'', before taking her to the police station where he further asked her about her plastic surgery.
After leaving the station, two weeks later, she then received an unexpected phone call from the officer, who asked her about an injury she had suffered.
Marwa said: “I received a phone call with an unknown number. He started the conversation with, ‘I was wondering how your leg was?’, and I said, ‘oh no, it's a little bit better but it's quite bruised and swollen’.
“He proceeds to tell me, ‘this call is off record’, so I had my friend next to me and I muted my phone and said, ‘can you please record this because this doesn't feel right?’”
The mum-of-one said that the officer began giving her legal advice, before she ended the call by telling him she had to enter Nando’s restaurant with a friend.
He then called her a second time and asked if she had “enough Nando's for two” as she grew more uncomfortable with his advances.
Marwa said: “After a couple of minutes I go on to say, ‘why are you calling me?’, and he says that the call is completely off record and there's not a lot of people he meets in his line of work that he wants to meet again.
“Then I ask him, ‘what does he mean?' I said I didn't really get what he was trying to insinuate, and he then proceeded to say, 'What do I want him to do?'
“He then said he really likes me and given the chance he would have loved to conduct the search on me in custody.”
She said she ended the call and the officer tried to call her six times afterward. She then decided to report the incident to the local police station, where she says officers “didn’t take her seriously”.
Marwa said: “On arrival at the police station, they did not take me seriously at the desk. I'm there saying I wanted to report a police officer. I basically was told to 'f**k off'.
“I said I have the officer in question's name and I have the recording. Then I was taken seriously. If I didn't have that recording, no one would have believed me.”
The creepy call in full
Here is what PC Andrew Turner said during his two conversations with Marwa after obtaining her confidential information on the police database in order to contact her.
He said: "This is an unofficial call we're giving you now. Obviously because you were such a nice person to me.
"I saw a lot of you. At the time you have to be as professional as possible but there's worse jobs. At least it was nice to look at I suppose with all due respect, I'm sorry if that's offensive.
"It's a shame for me if I don't bump into you around.
"I do have your number, does that mean I'm welcome to call it? Obviously, I'd really be appreciative if this conversation never happened.
"Got enough food for both of us? To be honest, I don't really know what I'm like doing with this phone call. I thought that you were just a load of fun so I thought it would be nice to have a shout.
"I'm not making you feel uncomfortable am I? Harassment is if you don't want them to call you if you do want them to call you then it's fine.
"In my position you're not really put in contact with many people that you would want to speak after you see to be fair. You are the first person.
"I'm going to have to cross the line into being unprofessional, aren't I? You were fun to be around. I was, to put it lightly, I was hoping they would let me conduct a search on you in custody.
"I don't see how you could have been able to sort of hide much, I wouldn't have minded though."
Following a professional standards investigation, the officer was given a final warning, which Marwa did not believe was fair as she still sees him on patrol.
She said: “To be fair I feel like I took it the furthest I could and even then I feel like I didn't get any justice, seeing him out on patrol. My biggest fear now is to imagine being pulled over and it's him. I don't like being pulled over by men full stop anyway, when they do the random checks and so on.
“At this stage of life, if I'm being pulled over there should be a female officer present.”
Activist Patsy Stevenson, who was famously pictured being held down by police at a vigil for Sarah Everard, says she feels there are "no consequences" for the police and this makes them "keep doing it".
Patsy said: "There are no consequences for these officers. That's what lets them get away with it. If there's no consequence then people are going to keep doing it.
"WhatsApp group chats, everyone sort of getting away with the racism and misogyny within the Met anyway, and within the police force. That it just allows room for police to abuse their power and act like that."
Patsy says that any other professional would have lost their job for obtaining confidential information and using it for personal gain - and that trust continues to be eroded.
She said: "lmagine if a doctor got someone's details and then flirted with the patient - there'd be uproar. You don't do that. That's that's very can be very scary especially when the police is in a position of power as well.
"He has her contact details. Is that going to go anywhere else? Has he shared it with anyone else? There's so many other things that could happen from that.
"I don't think there's any [trust] left at this point. I think a lot of women are sort of not sure what the solution is. They're sort of waiting for one."
Marwa’s solicitor Matthew McConville, from Irving’s Law, said: “It goes without saying that our clients (and the public in general) have the right to expect integrity in the police service and should have confidence in police officers to act in a professional manner.
“Unfortunately, there has been a definite shortfall in the service that Ms Mohammed has received in this incident and there are grave concerns over how and the Metropolitan Police dealt with it as a whole too.”
A spokesperson for the Met said: “The public have a right to expect that officers engage with members of the public professionally and not for self-serving purposes such as the pursuit of relationships.
"The actions of PC Turner, in instigating and engaging in flirtatious conversation with a member of the public that he was having professional dealings with, was wholly inappropriate and fell far below the standards expected of a police officer.
"The matter has been fully investigated and an independent chair has applied sanctions on the officer.”
