UK UK - Sarah Everard, 33, London - Clapham Common area, 3 March 2021 #3

[Herat]

I can't even imagine how awful it must be for SE's going through all of this. I really hope that this is 'just' an abduction (I can't believe I'm writing that), and that the officer will 'fess up and disclose SE's location and that she'll be found alive and well (or, as well as possible, considering the ordeal).

Seems pretty unlikely, sadly.

I think word of a "rescue operation" would have leaked out by now

 

[Alethea]

Sarah Everard disappearance: Met officer arrested

I am not sure how you define evening but from the BBC:

Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave said: "The arrest this evening is a serious and significant development. We will continue to work with all speed on this investigation but the fact that the arrested man is a serving Metropolitan Police officer is both shocking and deeply disturbing."

 

[Moonchild90]

There will be ANPR cams around too or indeed the same cams we've been viewing just don't have access to those features.

Yeah I remember loads of greyed pictures...scary... Which way would you take going from the last point she was seen to Kent by car (assuming he lives there)? Maybe there are more greyed pics on CCTV along the way?

 

[NottReds50]

If he is the perp I wonder what his plan was to avoid detection. If he used his car to pick her up we know that would likely be spotted. Maybe the abduction was through other means.

Good point, he may not have used a car. If he’s a local officer, knows his way around etc just covered his track, diverted?

 

[ludakristen]

Maybe he picked her up on a whim but with bad intentions. If he's a sexual predator, and he's on patrol and sees a young woman alone and vulnerable, it could've been opportunistic. Maybe he intended to *just* (blech) sexually assault her but she fought back, or things went south, etc. Ugh.

 

[Skigh]

This arrest is now reported in the sunonline, presumably with a word-for-word police-issued statement. Does the use of ‘arrested at a location...’ mean anything specific? I tend to remember from the news in other cases, ‘arrested at an address...’

It says arrested at an address.

Police officer arrested over disappearance of Sarah Everard, 33, in London

 

[TheBorez]

I’m still unsure over the ‘SE not knowing this officer theory.’

IMO, if I was walking down a street at 9:30pm and an unmarked car pulled over with presumably 1 person purporting to be a police officer (even if in Uniform and with lights) I wouldn’t willingly approach them. I believe SE knew this person. (To be fair, I’m from Northern Ireland and we trust nobody here... but I still feel it would be odd to trust someone off the bat like that.)

 

[Tortoise]

I'm surprised there were no eye witnesses to help police yet, none that we know of anyway. A young woman stopping to talk to police in a car, and getting into a police car would be more memorable than any old car.

This assumes he was in a police car, but if he wasn't Sarah trusting him is less likely. MOO

 

[Firstsnow4]

"You are breaking lockdown rules, get in the car" - wouldn't be the first time words to that effect have been used in the last few months by police.

No I can understand how he may have got her in the car but what would he have expected to happen?? What was the end point and motive to it all?

 

[Whitehall 1212]

The county town is Maidstone actually. Sorry to be pedantic.

Pedantic is good.....accuracy is everything. Apologies for my error.....I'm not a Kentish man.

 

[ludakristen]

No I can understand how he may have got her in the car but what would he have expected to happen?? What was the end point and motive to it all?

Probably sexual assault.

 

[ElizaKate]

If the officer was simply helping a friend conceal a crime, don’t you think that the friend would have been arrested first and more prominently? I think it is fairly obvious that the officer is the perpetrator of the crime.

You would think so. But is it possible as someone above has suggested that this PO has been tampering with evidence/accessing evidence he shouldn't and therefore he's been arrested on those grounds. Still a chance he's covering up something for the actual perpetrator but there's not sufficient evidence to arrest that person yet. Not sure if I believe this though but I'm just speculating options.

 

[Tortoise]

There will be ANPR cams around too or indeed the same cams we've been viewing just don't have access to those features.

Responsible for the grayed out cctv cameras lately?? (possibility)

 

[JST]

No I can understand how he may have got her in the car but what would he have expected to happen?? What was the end point and motive to it all?

IMO, sexual is most likely.

 

[elmomom]

I tend to believe the officer has been in custody and that the searches happening today are based on confessions he has made.

 

[SveJeMoguce]

Maybe he picked her up on a whim but with bad intentions. If he's a sexual predator, and he's on patrol and sees a young woman alone and vulnerable, it could've been opportunistic. Maybe he intended to *just* (blech) sexually assault her but she fought back, or things went south, etc. Ugh.

You also have to consider that the woman also arrested at the same address (wife?) "assisted the offender". It's one thing to imagine he assaulted her, it's another to then accept that she was complicit in the crime!!

 

[TheTruthWillOut]

Could they have done something at work on a computer system e.g. look the case up when not involved that's raised suspicion their way?

Your post gives me flashbacks to a post I think I remember about a Putney? police officer being surprised about the TfL cameras....And now I won't sleep.

Anyone else remember the post/poster?

 

[peterf]

I’m still unsure over the ‘SE not knowing this officer theory.’

IMO, if I was walking down a street at 9:30pm and an unmarked car pulled over with presumably 1 person purporting to be a police officer (even if in Uniform and with lights) I wouldn’t willingly approach them. I believe SE knew this person. (To be fair, I’m from Northern Ireland and we trust nobody here... but I still feel it would be odd to trust someone off the bat like that.)

MOO If i was a gambling man I would bet on the fact that they already knew each other and the meeting was planned. Then something crazy happened. This case came to mind

 

[Parmalade]

I now keep thinking back to that post on here somewhat out of the blue from a user contacted on SM, allegedly from a police officer, about what CCTV images could be accessed and how... we initially scoffed that an officer wouldn’t know about that sort of thing (I should add: scoffed not at the truthfulness of the poster on here, but rather in the sense of assuming that the officer might not be who they said there were if they didn’t know that but were involved in the investigation, and instead might have been a journo trying it on.

But what if that was this officer, and he was snooping on the case online because he wasn’t actually part of the investigation and/or had a LE role that didn’t require use or even knowledge of TFL CCTV, and was concerned he could be picked up on camera coercing SE into his vehicle? Doesn’t bear thinking about... but nothing would surprise me with this case now.

 

[CoverMeCagney]

Does anyone know how long it typically takes for the name of a suspect to be released? If that was here, we’d typically have a name by now.

The name might not be released until/unless charged. Might never be released if no charges are brought. However, arresting a police officer seems pretty serious!

I like to wheel this one out every now and then:

LINK: What It’s Like To Be Arrested in the U.K.

..... it’s a lot easier to arrest someone in the United Kingdom, but being arrested there isn’t a big deal like it is in the United States. American police need probable cause to make an arrest, but in the United Kingdom, officers can arrest on [reasonable] suspicion.

Probable cause [USA] is defined as the belief that a crime was probably committed, and that the suspect was probably responsible. Reasonable suspicion [UK] means that a right-minded individual would have grounds to suspect that a crime had been committed and that the suspect might be responsible. To have probable cause, greater evidence is required.

NOTE: this is why arrests are a bigger deal in America - the legwork has already been done. UK police can arrest much sooner, on suspicion rather than fact. That means that many people get arrested and then released, but it also means our police have much more immediate powers to make searches / serve warrants / do other policey things.

Interesting article, worth a read.