I’ll never forgive what the police did to me at Sarah Everard’s vigil…

“Who killed Sarah Everard? POLICE KILLED SARAH EVERARD!” – this was the call and response that rang clear in the twilight when police swarmed on Clapham Common and violently arrested a number of women mourners at a vigil, including myself, to international public outcry in March 2021.

Three years later, the chant still rings in my ears.

Why did I go to the vigil even though the police ordered it to be cancelled? The answer is simple: it felt vital to mourn our dead sisters. Sarah wasn’t the first. She won’t be the last. And even though I was arrested – and have only this week received the damages I was owed – I don’t regret it. The scene was momentous and moving. The air was thick, the rage was palpable.

There was someone offering a megaphone to anyone who wanted to speak; women you could tell had no experience of protests were instinctively leading chants, telling the police to “arrest your own!”. I was on the bandstand, looking for people I knew. But suddenly, as the night drew in, the massive police presence felt threatening. We were all scared, but more than that: we were angry. Murder had happened on their watch.

We were in a Covid-safe position, all masked. I wanted to leave as it was obvious that the night was coming to a natural close – but it felt unsafe to leave while others were still there and police were swarming everywhere. Officers came up behind us but we were very pressed in and captured by the crowd and could hardly hear anything. One officer grabbed the woman of colour next to me, so I tried to get his arm off – and all at once the police were in front of me and saying we were going to be arrested. All I’d wanted to do was get to her.

I am a bit older and I have been to vigils and protests before, like the Black Lives Matter protests. But this felt completely different. All around us was the chant, “Hey mister: get your hands off my sister!”

My shoulder was bruised as I was frogmarched through the crowd, and I began shouting the names of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, two murdered Black women failed and degraded by police only months before. In my court papers, much of the police testimony hinged on the distinction between a vigil and a protest – but what vigil against injustice, policed by many police, wouldn’t be a protest? And why shouldn’t women protest against the murder of one of our own?

Yet after my arrest, the paranoia set in – I felt fearful, and still do, of police. In the police station I could hear arguments between police officers in the corridors. They must have known how it looked.

In the end, I pleaded not guilty in the magistrates court and my case was dropped. I then began a case against the police for wrongful arrest and breach of my rights to assemble and protest – and although the Met refused to admit liability, I feel vindicated by the fact that I received both the damages I sought and the costs of bringing the case. I’m now splitting those damages with pro-Palestine protesters.

I still remember how my heart dropped when I first heard a serving police officer had abducted Sarah. But it wasn’t a surprise. I was heartbroken for her family, but also for those forced to relive similar losses.

In the recent BBC documentary about the search for Sarah’s killer, Wayne Couzens, police said that their rigour in the case was informed by her being an “atypical” disappearance – you could say, a white, wealthy woman. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sarah Reed, a Black woman dead by suicide after being assaulted by an officer and then imprisoned for self-defence against sexual assault. I was at her vigil – and at Clapham Common that night I cried for her too.

The public outcry after the vigil was as warming as the police attempt to close ranks was alarming. Another woman who had been arrested at the vigil was contacted by about 50 police officers on dating apps. My case was dropped; the High Court found that police did not accommodate the vigil organisers’ protected EHRC Article 10 and Article 11 rights.

Some things do change – and not necessarily for the better. I have witnessed the slow clampdown on our rights to protest at all happening in front of my very eyes. Protesters are being branded as “extremists” and prevented from wearing face masks. Thanks to the PCSC Act (formerly the Policing Bill), you can now be fined £2,500 or given six months in prison if the police think you’re shouting too loudly. We’ve seen the former home secretary Suella Braverman dubbing the overwhelmingly peaceful pro-Palestine rallies as “hate marches”. A pensioner was arrested for sticking a Palestine poster to an MP’s door.

The sweeping and restrictive powers granted in the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill – about which protests were held in the wake of the vigil’s overpolicing – are now being used to their fullest extent.

We must connect the dots and demand a better world. “Who killed Sarah Everard?” found its voice again from protestors who had sat in front of a police van to prevent the violent arrest of a young woman over an inoffensive placard. We must fight back against the system in Sarah’s name – and in the name of so many other lives lost.

Jeni Taygeta Pinto Edmunds is a campaigner and organiser, formerly working at INQUEST, DJ and sound on NTS