THE Sarah Everard murder and its implications for the police dominated the newspaper comment sections.

The Daily Mail

Jan Moir said Wayne Couzens was the kind of monster who frightens women out of their wits, with good reason.

“Couzens is the new urban bogeyman, an ogre cloaked in the police identity that gave him power over defenceless Sarah Everard,” she said. “Before Couzens was sentenced this week, Miss Everard’s family read their victim impact statements as he sat shaking in the dock, a snivelling coward refusing to meet their gaze.”

She said she had her doubts about victim impact statements from families being read in court, being an idea copied from America.

“[But in this case] their eloquence was moving, the depth of their grief awful to behold,” she said. “Her mother spoke of how every night, at the exact moment Sarah was abducted, she silently screams: ‘Don’t get in the car, run for your life.’ This is not just wrenching, but unforgettable,

“The dignity and eloquence of the Everard family was as awful to behold as it was inspiring. One can only hope their words seared into Wayne Couzens’s soul and shame him until the day he dies.”

The Daily Express

Paul Baldwin asked why a serving police officer allegedly spotted naked from the waist down in his car outside a fast food joint was not arrested, and why an officer with a known problem with illegal drugs was issued with an automatic weapon.

“The questions over how Wayne Couzens was ever allowed to use his police status to rape and murder, bewildering, gobsmacking and astonishing as they are, keep coming one after another,” he said. “And if you and I find them shocking to the point of incomprehension just imagine what the family of Sarah Everard are going through.”

He said an apology was not enough.

“There’s a real feeling that with Sarah Everard’s wholly preventable rape and murder they’ve lost us - members of the public who instinctively support the police - maybe for good.”

The Guardian

Shami Chakrabarti, former shadow attorney general for England and Wales, said from the moment Sarah Everard was stopped by Wayne Couzens, she ‘probably never had a chance’.

“In coming weeks, many senior voices in the police, politics and media will claim that Couzens was a single bad apple in an otherwise functional system,” she said. “But we must not budge until there are fundamental changes in how we fund and train the police, and how we legislate around crime.

“We learned from the trial this week that at least three accusations of indecent exposure had been made against Couzens (the first was as far back as 2015, and the last only days before Everard’s murder). Urgent answers are now required as to how he was allowed to remain in service.

“If politicians are to learn anything from the murder of Sarah Everard, it should be to vote for, not simply emote about, the protection of women.”