On twitter, the police reach out to tell people it’s unsafe and that they should go home but barely a minute later, several officers grab women standing in the bandstand and leading them away.

Ms Patsy Stevenson was one of the women who had been arrested and has gone viral due to images of her arrest being published online. According to Sky news, she was ‘terrified’ as an officer warned her he had a baton. 

Before 8pm, there were chants of ‘All Cops are B*****ds’, ‘Shame on You’ and ‘Scum’. Several more people were arrested and there was shoving as the officers made their way through the crowd. 

However at 8:00pm, many people had moved away from the Bandstand but those who remain continue to lay flowers and light candles. 

A statement to Sky News by Reclaim These streets says, "It is their responsibility to protect public order, public health and the right to protest – they failed (on Saturday night) on all accounts."

But according to a report by the Guardian on the 30th March, Watchdog claimed that the police handling was appropriate due to the risk of Covid-19 spreading. 

Theoretically, this could have been all avoided, had the Met worked with the organizations that wanted the Vigil. They could’ve created a safer way to mourn that would’ve allowed a more peaceful protest that potentially could have dispersed when the police asked the crowd to as they would likely have been more respectful to the police.

Following this Vigil however, an anti-protest policy has been proposed. The policy would allow police greater control over what conditions they want to implement on non-violent protests with the convictions that may lead to jail time. 

The bill would clamp down on free speech, expression and it says something that it is coming about now after Black Lives Matter Protests and Vigils like Sarah Everard. Policies like this would make it harder for people to go out and protest, which they have the right to do, as no one would trust the police to keep everything neutral. This bill would allow them to cut a protest short for the slightest thing and after the year we have had, watching these protests and the police’s responses, I don’t think many would trust them to remain calm.