Sam Kerr and her brush with a very fragile cop

The story of a drunken footballer and the court case that should never have happened.

In my previous life as a talkback radio producer, I would sometimes be in charge of answering calls on the open line. That meant anyone who wanted to go on radio with a half-baked idea, comment, or question would first have to be vetted by me before speaking to the host.

If you’ve ever tuned into Sydney radio, you’d be familiar with the utter dross that goes to air. Bad opinions that are very badly expressed abound. Believe it or not, these callers are the creme of the crop – the aspirational top 10% of everyone the producers talk to.

The people who don’t make it on air swing between incomprehensible, abusive, or sometimes completely and utterly insane.

One person would call several times in the same shift. If I answered, I’d get an urgent stream of consciousness.

“You don’t understand! It’s a riddle, you see, it’s a riddle,” he’d repeat over and over again.

Another man would call up and hiss insults, “you’re a fucking whore slut,” he’d say tautologically.

He’d pop up every now and then, like a poisonous daisy.

When I heard his man’s voice (and to this day I can still remember how he sounded) I’d roll my eyes and hangup. On the bad days he’d repeatedly redial the station.

One afternoon, after getting several calls in quick succession, I tried a different tactic.

I answered his number and waited for the spiel to begin. “You’re a fucking stupid bitch and a fucking who–”

“This number has been forwarded to the Australian Federal Police,” I said, mimicking the robotic pre-recorded voice you sometimes hear from Government agencies.

I heard an exhalation of breath, as the build-up of insults suddenly evaporated. He sounded a bit like a man who had been punched in the solar plexus.

“Your case number with the Australian federal police is 5 – 5 – 3 – 2…”

The line went dead as he hung up. I never heard from this caller again.

Getting viciously insulted while I was doing my job wasn’t very nice. But, if I’m going to be honest, it didn’t really bother me. I understood that this was the cost of interacting with the general public, particularly in the line of work I’d chosen.

But if there was a world where I had infinite time, and infinite resources, would I have gone after this man? Pressed charges and forced him to answer for his behaviour? Honestly, no. I have a life. But more than that, my skin is thick and I possess the ability to contextualise these types of incidents.

These attributes are unremarkable and, I would have thought, not in short supply. You’d also expect they would be a prerequisite for many professions dealing with the public. Like, police officers, for example.

But in the United Kingdom that appears not to be the case.

At least that’s my read, having followed the egregiously time-wasting case brought against Sam Kerr in England.

If you’ve somehow missed the media storm, here’s a rough summary of what happened.

This all dates back to two years ago, when Sam and her now-fiance Kristie Mewis were out on the town. They’d had a lot of drinks, decided to head home, and hopped in a cab. At this point, they were both quite drunk. Sam put down the window to get some air, and then had what she described as a ‘spit-spew’ outside of the taxi.

This is less than stellar behaviour, but let she who has not chundered on a big night out cast the first stone.

Seeing Same being sick, the cab driver became irate. He yelled at them both, put the window up and started driving very fast and very erratically and in the wrong direction. Sam and her partner were terrified. They begged to be let out of the cab, but the driver refused. They thought they were being abducted.

Finally, the cab driver arrived at his destination - a police station in Twickenham. Kristie, in her desperation to escape, kicked out a window which Sam then climbed out of.

While separated, the cab driver told his side of the story, and then the couple told theirs. Critically, the beginning of the conversation with Sam and Kristie was not recorded. But according to the pair, it was appalling. The police didn’t accept their account of events, refused to investigate their claims, and patronisingly called Sam ‘missy moo’.

It would be more than 20 minutes after both women had exited the cab – at a point when Sam and Kristie were suitably distressed – that a police officer finally decided to turn on his body camera.

Much has been made of Sam’s behaviour in the subsequent thirty-or-so minutes. Her language, her attitude, how she — drunk and indignant about her treatment — acted. The crux of the case against Sam came down to one point where she called a group of male officers ‘stupid and white’ (a clumsy jab at both their privilege and inability to empathise).

Meanwhile, comparatively little has been written about the the behaviour of Constable Lovell. This is the man who was sober, in a position of power, and employed by the public to investigate criminal incidents. He is also the sensitive little petal who pressed charges against Sam.

Please allow me to fill that void.

A screenshot of the police body camera

During the interview Constable Lovell (and the other male officers who were present) stubbornly refuse to accept any possibility that Sam and Kristie had a legitimate complaint. They make no attempts to de-escalate the conversation, consider their point of view, or do even a perfunctory amount of police work.

For example, Constable Lovell asks why Sam and Kristie didn’t call the police when they were trapped in the taxi. Both women said that they had.

"Did you stay on the phone long enough to even speak to someone, that's the thing?" Constable Lovell asked.

"They hung up on us!" Sam replied

"OK, but they wouldn't do that, though."

Except that they did. Court documents showed that police had terminated the call, and then tried unsuccessfully to get back in touch.

The manner in which these men patronisingly question the now-undisputed reality of Sam and Krisite’s situation is crazy making. And that’s dead sober, emotionally removed from the incident, and sitting behind a computer. Remember, these women legitimately (and I would argue fairly) thought they just survived an attempt on their lives.

Then, at another point in the interview, Constable Lovell says: “as it stands, what you've told me doesn't substantiate to any offences.”

This was also not true.

In evidence, Constable Lovell did admit that what the driver’s behaviour could have amounted to dangerous driving and false imprisonment. But perhaps he didn’t want to say that at the time, because he would then be required to do some police work.

As it stands, the cabbie was not formally interviewed, the police did not search for a recording device in the car which might have substantiated Sam and Kristie’s claims, and the driver has not been heard from again. Hopefully he doesn't pull a similar stunt in the future.

At the very least, I think we can all agree this was an ignoble evening for everyone involved. Eventually Sam paid for the damaged, had a formal interview with police where she apologised, and then moved on with her life.

But the tender Constable Lovell had been emotionally bruised by the incident, so much so that he complained about Sam’s language to the Crown Prosecution Service. At first they declined to take on the case. But Constable Lovell is as determined as he is sensitive, so he appealed. Eleven months after his initial whinge, he provided an updated statement which talked about his shock, upset, and humiliation.

This was enough to nudge the case over the line – the Crown Prosecution Service now knew the big man’s fee-fees had been really hurt and they were willing to go to court over it. Two years after that drunken night, the case was heard by an impartial jury. They were asked to determine whether what Sam Kerr had said was racially aggravated harassment and that it also caused Constable Lovell alarm or distress.

In a bit over four hours, the jury determined that Constable Lovell should really just get over this one and found Sam not guilty.

So what’s next? My hope is that Sam can resume her sporting superstar life with her partner and soon-to-be-born child.

As for Constable Lovell, I wish for him to develop some fortitude and perspective. I’m sure lots of people will say mean things to him in the span of his job. Some of these will be genuinely intended to cause harm, and that’s very sad. Other times, he might be the recipient of bad words that are spoken for good reason.

Hopefully he can learn to look inward and learn the difference.

But introspection and growth isn’t for everyone. So if this is not possible, may he have a life of PG rated films, music without lyrics, and warm cups of milk before bed – an existence to which he would likely be best suited.