Museum’s ex-parrot still has beautiful plumage
A new television series documents the professional and personal lives of some of North Yorkshire Police’s female officers and staff. Chris Burn speaks to two of them.
MEMBERS OF the Yorkshire Museum’s curatorial team have been carrying out important condition checks on the museum’s renowned taxidermy collection.
The museum, in York Museum Gardens, is home to a nationally significant natural science collection, which includes a wide range of specimens, including meteorites, passenger pigeons, dodo bones and an almost complete moa skeleton.
Curator Sarah King can be seen carefully studying the museum’s red lory parrot, while senior curator Andrew Wood is pictured checking on the popular peacock, located in the museum’s library.
The curatorial team regularly look over the exhibits as part of wider routine environmental checks to ensure the correct conditions are maintained for collections while the museum has been closed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The last 12 months have been tough for the York Museum’s Trust as 70 per cent of its normal income is generated by visitors and the lockdowns have hit it hard.
The museum trust would like to thank everyone who has supported it through the difficult time. Donations are still gratefully received.
POLICE are continuing their search for a woman, originally from York, who has gone missing in south London and have released CCTV footage in a bid to help find her.
Sarah Everard, 33, was last seen at a friend’s house in Clapham last Wednesday evening, which she left at around 9pm.
She is thought to have left Leathwaite Road through a back gate and walked across Clapham Common and was expected to arrive home around 50 minutes later, but she has not been seen or heard from since. It is unclear if she returned to her home address, the Metropolitan Police said.
Ms Everard was last seen wearing a green rain jacket, navy blue trousers with a white diamond pattern, and turquoise and orange trainers. She is thought to have been wearing green earphones and a white beanie hat.
North Yorkshire Police has also shared the appeal to help find Ms Everard, saying she has links to York.
In a statement her family, who are thought to have travelled from York to London to assist with the search, said: “With every day that goes by we are getting more worried about Sarah. She is always in regular contact with us and with her friends and it is totally out of character for her to disappear like this.
“We long to see her and want nothing more than for her to be found safe and well.
“We are so grateful to the police and all our friends for all they are doing.
“We are desperate for news and if anyone knows anything, we would urge you to please come forward and speak to the police.”
Detective Chief Inspector Ian Kenward said: “Sarah’s disappearance is completely out of character and understandably her family and friends are incredibly worried.
“We are also growing increasingly concerned for her welfare and have officers working round the clock to try and find her.”
Last night detectives discovered new CCTV of Ms Everard confirming she was walking alone around half an hour after leaving her friend’s home.
A fresh CCTV image understood to have been discovered on a private doorbelltype camera – captured her alone along the A205 Poynders road, from the junction at Cavendish Road, towards Tulse Hill.
Anyone with information should call police on 101, quoting CAD 3309/06MAR, or call the Missing People charity on 116 000.
WOMEN SLEEPING rough on the streets are at significantly increased risk of sexual exploitation, a West Yorkshire charity has warned on International Women’s Day.
Simon On The Streets has said the majority of the women it has assisted through Yorkshire over the past two years have engaged in “survival sex” to keep a roof over their heads.
The charity has run a two-year funded project from the government’s Tampon Tax fund to employ specialist outreach workers who support homeless women in Leeds, Kirklees and Bradford.
But as the funding comes to an end on March 31, the charity has warned that more women in Yorkshire are at risk of exploitation.
Simon On The Streets has found permanent accommodation for thirteen of the 65 women it has helped through the project over the past two years, with the majority of the rest finding temporary accommodation.
The charity said the relatively low number of women finding permanent accommodation reflects the difficulties in adjusting from life on the streets.
One Leeds woman in her 50s has significant mental health and drug problems but was able to be successfully adjusted by Simon On The Streets into permanent accommodation, including help with budgeting and meal planning, and is now working to overcome her addiction.
Another, a Leeds woman in her 20s, was approached by the charity as she was a migrant from the EU and was told she had no recourse to public funds. The woman has regularly been exploited for sex by a man who told her she must sleep with him in order to stay on his office floor.
The charity was able to find her a space in women’s specialist housing.
Chief executive Natalie Moran said: “Many women who experience homelessness are often hidden from the public, from services and from official statistics.
“They are more likely to be among the ‘hidden homeless’ as they will make efforts to hide away or stay in exploitative situations to avoid sleeping on the streets.
“It is often a long and difficult journey from homelessness to being independent and in your own house, but we continue to support people regardless of how long it takes.”
According to government statistics, 14 per cent of rough sleepers in the UK are women and research shows that the average age of death for a homeless woman is just 42 years old.
Some 28 per cent of homeless women have formed an unwanted sexual partnership to get a roof over their heads.
Simon On The Streets has been offering street-support to individuals who have complex needs and cannot access mainstream services, due to behavioural issues or mental illness, since 1999.
A report in 2018 found women sleeping rough tend to be younger and are significantly more likely than men to be aged 25 or under.
Women who experience homelessness are often hidden from the public, Simon On The Streets Chief executive Natalie Moran
It is important for people to see that police officers are people too. When you are wearing the uniform you are targeted and it was quite a shock when I first started to see the anger and abuse.
WORKING FOR the police requires an ability to get to the truth of people’s stories – now it is the officers themselves who are in the spotlight for a new TV series going behind-thescenes at North Yorkshire Police.
Given Women on the Force is co-produced by former police officer Dan Clark-Neal (who knows what it is like in front of the camera as a Big Brother contestant), it is perhaps no surprise that the show uncovers fascinating details about the lives and motivations of the very different women who work for North Yorkshire Police (NYP) as it follows them both at work and at home.
Among those who feature in the documentary – which is the second series of Women on the Force after a first focusing on neighbouring West Yorkshire Police in 2019 – is PC Alicia Oakes.
The 29-year-old has been a police officer for four years after initially volunteering as a special constable but had an unusual route into the job after training as a flautist and doing a classical music degree at York University.
“As many classical musicians find, it is very difficult to get a job. I ended up in events management,” she explains. “My journey to the police started when we had a detective inspector at an event I had organised. I got speaking to him and I think he probably realised I was bored out of my mind with what I was doing.
“They were recruiting for special constables so I joined up, did that for a year and realised I loved it. I think it just suits my personality. It is exciting, every day is different, you are thinking on your feet and working as a team.”
PC Oakes was being filmed for the series when she had to use her Taser for the first time in her career as her colleague was being seriously attacked during a call-out to a domestic violence incident. “To be honest, I forgot the cameras were there,” she explains. “This man assaulted my colleague in front of me. I had never seen such levels of aggression and I had no option but to pull the Taser. It was the only tactical option I had. It was a scary moment and my adrenaline was through the roof. But it was effective and we then arrested him.”
PC Oakes says she feels the programme has an important purpose. “One of the main reasons I wanted to get involved with the show is because there are occasions where you do feel undermined based on people’s stereotypes. I’m a girl doing what many people think is a man’s job.”
She adds: “It is important for people to see that police officers are people too. When you are wearing the uniform you are targeted and it was quite a shock when I first started. The anger and abuse that police officers get, I was getting for the first time in my life. We are people, we have got feelings, lives and families at home.”
PC Oakes says that in addition to the challenges of enforcing new Covid laws, the pandemic has also introduced new risks. “People coughing at police is a real problem – I have been spat at twice since Covid started. It is another danger we have to deal with on top of everything else.”
Starting her career with the police has also coincided with her rediscovering a love of music and she is now a member of York’s Cobweb Orchestra after not playing for a while when she was working in events management. “Everybody that goes has got their own story but when we are just playing a piece of Brahms together, nobody is thinking about work or home, they are thinking about the music they are playing. You can close off everything else.”
She says being an officer has changed her view of life. “As soon as I joined the police, I realised what a great upbringing I had but also how sheltered I had been.
“I do feel that I see the world differently now. I don’t take anything at face value because you don’t know what happens behind people’s closed doors. But having been behind those doors now, it makes me appreciate what I have so much more.
“I’m much more open now – before I joined the police, I wouldn’t have said to my parents ‘I love you’ but now I tell them every day. My partner is a police officer and we are so realistic with things and are probably more grounded because of what we do.”
Another participant in the show is PC Uzma Amireddy, who is the force’s Positive Action Coordinator.
She was born in Pakistan. When she moved to the UK at the age of 12, she could not speak English. After learning the language, she ended up getting a law degree, but finances and family circumstances prevented her taking a legal practice course to become a solicitor, she decided to become a police officer instead. She started at Cleveland Police before transferring to North Yorkshire.
She made headlines in November for her work designing a hijab safe to be worn as work uniform should an officer face a violent confrontation.
The programme covers her efforts with a colleague to make sure it was adopted as an official part of the force’s uniform, as well as her wider diversity work that she juggles with being a mum to three young children.
She says that while her role “may not seem that exciting” initially to viewers, she believes the work she is doing is both vital and potentially life-saving.
“Great Britain is one of the most diverse countries on the globe, with people living here speaking different languages. I used to get colleagues saying, ‘We have a domestic but the lady doesn’t speak the language’. That could be someone who has been imprisoned in their home for five years but if you can’t communicate with her as a police force we are letting that woman down. By having more diversity in the police, you could be saving lives.”
PC Amireddy says there is still work to be done across policing to change things for the better.
“I think there is a long way to go. I have friends who work in the NHS and when I explain my role, I get comments that policing is really behind but unfortunately we are. I’m really privileged to do the work I do in North Yorkshire but on a national level, we have a long way to go as a police force.
“When I walk into a room, I don’t want people looking at me differently and treating me differently. When I started here four years ago I was afraid to wear a hijab. But I decided I wanted to do it. I don’t want to leave my religion at home because it completes me as a person.
“With this documentary I’m hoping it is going to encourage a lot of females that are thinking of a career in policing to come and join.
“I’m hoping it is not just going to start a conversation, it will ensure a lot more women do come forward and do what they want to do in life.
“I don’t want to leave my culture and religion at home. It shouldn’t be about fitting in, I should still be who I am.”
Women on the Force previews on tonight at 10.30pm, the full series starts weekly from Thursday 8th April at 8pm on W.