Met to put hundreds of extra officers on streets after Everard murder

Hundreds of police officers will be added to London’s streets over the next six months in a bid to make women and girls feel safer, the Metropolitan Police has said.

The force has announced an additional 650 officers will be put in place across the capital, with 500 officers being based permanently in busy neighbourhoods and 150 joining London wards as “Bobbies on the beat”.

The Met said the addition of the new officers – a combination of new staff as part of the Government’s national recruitment drive and redeployed personnel – was part of a drive to cut down on violent crime, including domestic abuse and violence against women and girls, after the murder of Sarah Everard by police officer Wayne Couzens.

The armed officer used his police issue handcuffs and warrant card to stage the fake arrest of the 33-year-old before he raped and murdered her.

The town centre teams will be made up of one inspector, two sergeants and 21 police constables.

Once in place, the local police leaders will be able to increase the size of their teams if needed.

The first tranche of officers will be in place by late 2021 and all 19 teams are expected to be in place by spring 2022.

They will be located in boroughs and towns across London, from Hounslow, west London, to Barking and Dagenham, east London.

Met Police Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave said: “Our growth enables us to increase our presence in busy neighbourhoods and town centres and be even more focused on protecting people and solving the long-term crime and anti-social behaviour issues we know people care about most – like violent crime, and violence and harassment committed against women and girls.

“Local policing is at the heart of everything we do and we know that we are so much more effective if we are in communities and neighbourhoods, working side-by-side with all Londoners, listening and engaging with them, tackling the issues that make them feel unsafe.

“We want communities to regularly see and get to know their local officers, so that they trust and have confidence in them, knowing they are there to protect and keep them safe.”

Areas where there are “extraordinary demands”, such as Westminster, means there will be “enhanced” or “additional” town centre teams.

The boroughs of Camden and Brent will have two teams whilst the West End will have a single but bigger team.

On Monday, Met Police chief Dame Cressida Dick announced she has called in an independent reviewer to look at the force’s culture and standards following Couzens’ whole life sentencing last week.

Dame Cressida plans to announce who will undertake the review, expected to take at least six months, in about a week’s time.

In an interview with the BBC on Tuesday, the Prime Minister said the “anger over Sarah Everard’s murder is a symptom” of a “wider frustration that people feel”.

He added that making streets safer is part of making women and girls feel more safe.

He told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We are putting (in) more CCTV, better street lighting. But what you’ve got to do is address the underlying frustration of millions of women, and millions of people across the country, at the slowness of the criminal justice system and the inadequacy of the justice system in dealing with crimes of rape and domestic violence and sexual violence.”

The UK crime and policing minister, Kit Malthouse, told Sky News he accepts there is a problem with violence against women in the UK and said the reason for a fall in rape convictions was “complicated”.

He added: “We are very focused on this issue and we’ve pledged to try and drive these numbers up, to try to restore that institutional confidence and people coming forward.

“The confidence of people coming forward to report that crime has increased very significantly over the last four or five years.”