Sarah Everard was a beautiful young woman with an infectious smile. Aged 33, she had her life before her: She was good at her job as a marketing executive and no doubt harboured future plans: be it travelling, making a family home or marriage. Her dreams were unscrupulously snatched away in the cruellest, most sadistic of circumstances by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens.

Thankfully the national press has generally shown some semblance of morality, post phone hacking scandals and the ilk, and have refused to publish the minutiae. However, some details, extremely harrowing ones at that, have seeped into the public domain. The truth is we should be collectively shocked, yet shock now comes at a premium. We have become cold and immune to such crimes due to the many similar acts of evil perpetrated over the years. Murders rarely shake us anymore, no matter how twisted the motive, although undoubtedly they should shock us to the core. Victims of love, the blade or plain old wickedness become just another statistic and we generally, perversely, use as our yardstick the worst of the worst when judging how unpalatable a crime should be deemed, aka Sutcliffe, Fred and Rose, Shipman, Myra and Ian.

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But with Couzens, a beast who falsely arrested young Sarah to meet his own sordid urges, before raping, murdering and setting alight to her lifeless body, the case has been used to make a political point, which I find as unsavoury as can be.

The talking heads have been calling for all male police officers to undertake training to educate them that Couzens' behaviour was ‘not acceptable’, as if they are all simpletons with the IQ of an amoeba. It’s as if one poisonous apple has put across the impression that the barrel is sour and wanton perversion is rife amongst the boys in blue.

Couzens and the odd bent copper are now setting the agenda for the Met Police, yet I for one don’t blame serving police officers. Yes, there may well have been failings in management (Couzens nickname of ‘rapist’ sets alarms bells ringing) and their inability to effectively deal with reports of him indecently exposing himself, but that should not taint the force as a whole.

Arguably the case of the most notorious sex offender of modern times, John Worboys, who was a black cab driver, did not see the politicos calling for all cabbies to be punished for one bad apple’s actions. The biggest serial killer in UK history, Shipman, was a doctor, yet we aren’t calling for all medical professionals to be trained as to why they should not murder defenceless old women. Builders aren’t being attacked mercilessly for Fred West's numerous perversions, and neither are school caretakers being tainted with the brush of the murderous Ian Huntley.

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One cancerous lump does not represent the body and should be treated as an aberration from the norm and not politicised and the force attacked mercilessly as the Met Police are being. It is not a job I would want: attempting to always remain respectful in the face of increasing social venom and provocation, as those who use Google as their legal guide thrust a camera phone in an officer’s face and attempt to rile him or her into a career-threatening act of defiance when the pressure, in a tinderbox situation, becomes too much to bear.

We should be supporting the police and not pillorying them. They are no doubt as disgusted as we are by a former colleague whose actions were as shameful toward another human as we have arguably ever been unfortunate enough to witness. The job is difficult, fraught with danger, and officialdom, as they remain underfunded upholders of the law who spend more time writing reports than dealing with crime. The issues are arguably at a management level, and we should not crucify a profession that on the one hand we are desperate to recruit folk to, whilst on the other tainting them as all being Wayne Couzens, as politicians of all party colours clamour to put the boot in when the chips are down.

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher