We need to outlaw the boys’ club of the Old Bill
Confession alert: I was once pulled over and questioned by police officers. I’m ashamed to say, I was guilty of the crime.
I know. Quite an admission. It still troubles me, years later, for many reasons.
I was speaking on my mobile phone while at the wheel of my car. The defence I offered the two male cops – which was meagre and inexcusable but true – was that the car wasn’t actually moving at the time as I was stuck in a traffic jam, and – as a result – I really had to call my mother to tell her I’d be late home to pick up the kids.
Nonetheless, these were the days before bluetooth connectivity and I knew I should not have touched the mobile. So I deserved the punishment which would entail and should think myself lucky that it would be a fine and points on my licence.
I was told to get out of my vehicle. It was dark. Cars were going past freely now, but there was no one else about.
Two burly uniformed cops towered over me then told me to get into the back of their car. They got into the front seats and locked the doors.
And I remember their bulk as they questioned me aggressively and I felt genuinely scared for my own safety.
I was afraid of these men and what they could do. I was never worried that I was going to jail, but I was frightened of where else they could take me.
Was this just normal practice or was it a tactic? Did they mean to intimidate me so much that I would never again use my phone while in the car?
Would it be considered successful policing that I cried with relief when they finally unlocked the doors and let me out? Did they laugh about it afterwards?
I don’t know the answers. But the encounter shook me up terribly and left me with a feeling that I’d never considered before: that a woman can be vulnerable at the hands of the police. And now we are where we are: confronting the reality of institutionalised misogyny within the police.
Reacting to the horror of Sarah Everard’s murder by a serving officer (nicknamed “The Rapist” by colleagues), Police Scotland will introduce a new verification check.
When a lone officer approaches a member of the public they will “proactively” offer to put his/her personal radio on loudspeaker to control room staff.
Now this is to be applauded after the ludicrous suggestions by the Metropolitan Police that anyone distrustful of a policeman should flag down a bus or run to a nearby house.
But we can only wonder if Police Scotland would have been so quick to react had it not known what was coming down the tracks.
Last week, former firearms officer Rhona Malone won her employment tribunal against them, claiming victimisation. She says the force made a pre-tribunal offer of payout if she signed a nondisclosure agreement. She refused. Good on her.
Rhona’s complaint lifted a lid on an armed response unit said to be nothing more than a “horrific” boys’ club, one where her inspector posted pictures of topless women on a staff WhatsApp group and referred to a pregnant woman as “a right fat b****”, amongst other allegations.
AAn ex-colleague told how a firearms insinstructor said female officers shoshouldn’t be armed “because they memenstruated and this would affect thetheir temperament”.
NNow, the vast majority of police offiofficers are decent, honourable peopeople, dedicated to upholding the law and protecting the safety of citcitizens. Heaven knows we need them to ddo a difficult job.
BBut the culture in which they opoperate is evidently not conducive to equequality, nor to calling out colleagues whwhen their behaviour shames their badbadge.
InI Scotland, there are more than twice as many malem police officers than female. Some 73 per cent of higher ranking officers are men.
Insisting on male and female patrols, whenever two officers are required to be deployed together, would go a long way to changing the dynamics of the force. Ultimately, that requires the recruitment – and retention – of more women who see policing as a welcoming, inclusive career.
But it shouldn’t need the counterbalance of a female on duty with every male to effect real rootand-branch change.
What’s required is a formal acknowledgement, an emodiment in law.
Despite what BoJo says, or what his Justice Secretary Dominic “Dunderhead” Raab clearly fails to understand, the manifestation of misogyny, as hatred for women or girls, is a crime.
And a police uniform can be no longer be a disguise for perpetrators.