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RIP Sarah Everard, who went missing from Brixton in March 2021

bimble said:
i don't get it either. This says that the met recruited another bloke with a conviction for indecent exposure just last year. Why would you do that.
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And looking back 10 or so years to the killing of Ian Tomlinson, the thug that did that used a variety of internal moves between different departments of the police to continue to work after a number of incidents involving excessive violence both at work and in his civilian life. This did culminate with sacking after he had killed someone. Lessons were quite plainly there to learn but were not.
 
Red Cat said:
The context is always going to be the political function of the police, the reality of that function, as well the fantasies that police have about their own function. You'd have to do a lot of group work, and you do that in the context of an understanding of the conscious and unconscious functions of the police for the rest of society, and how those are met by individuals in the organisation, as well as the group. Similar to what you might need to do to have a well functioning NHS - what does the NHS stand for, in fantasy, what is projected into it, what underlying emotional needs are met there by its workers, what kind of organisations cultures and defences are created into order to keep people there doing their job, why are so many leaving. Uncertainties about roles are likely to amplify existing anxieties and defences. You need people who can work with conflict and contradiction.

I don't think they'll do this, it's a massive undertaking, and might undermine the political function of the police but there are organisational consultants who work with the police, I came across someone referencing a piece of consultancy work done with the police a few months ago but I can't remember where, I read so much stuff on the internet. I'll try and track it down.
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I agree with the general point of what you're saying, but I think I'm more pessimistic than you.

I'm absolutely certain they won't do this seriously, in the way it would need to be done. Not only is it a massive undertaking, but more importantly it would absolutely undermine the political function of the police.

The Police aren't institutionally racist, misogynist and corrupt by accident, the abuses of police power aren't an accident, it's a fundamental and necessary part of their political function to be those things.
 
bluescreen said:
You say that as if the two were somehow connected. Since when has this government ever cared about keeping its word or worried about a U-turn? Or worried about consequences of a U-turn? If they see crowd-pleasing in it, or money in it, they will do it.
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She won't be forced out during the Tory conference as she would become the bigger story and distract from their big event
 
andysays said:
I agree with the general point of what you're saying, but I think I'm more pessimistic than you.

I'm absolutely certain they won't do this seriously, in the way it would need to be done. Not only is it a massive undertaking, but more importantly it would absolutely undermine the political function of the police.

The Police aren't institutionally racist, misogynist and corrupt by accident, the abuses of police power aren't an accident, it's a fundamental and necessary part of their political function to be those things.
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No, that was what I was saying, that it is part of their political function. They also require a certain amount of legitimacy to carry out that political function though.

My main point was that the usual solution, training, education, the focus on information and attempts to change conscious individual attitudes, is useless, the work needed for any organisational change is on a different level.

eta you're right though andysays, I suppose I did come over as more optimistic than I actually am. My work is all about believing in the capacity to change even if it takes a long time and the change is minimal, so it does tend to colour my perspective.
 
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Red Cat said:
No, that was what I was saying, that it is part of their political function. They also require a certain amount of legitimacy to carry out that political function though.

My main point was that the usual solution, training, education, the focus on information and attempts to change conscious individual attitudes, is useless, the work needed for any organisational change is on a different level.

eta you're right though andysays, I suppose I did come over as more optimistic than I actually am. My work is all about believing in the capacity to change even if it takes a long time and the change is minimal, so it does tend to colour my perspective.
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I accept what you're saying about the requirement for a certain amount of legitimacy to carry out their political function, but unfortunately I don't think that legitimacy is seriously or significantly challenged even by cases like this, not when the political establishment are so keen on reinforcing it.

On an individual level, change can only come about if the individual wants to/is committed to change.

I think this is even more true of an organisation like the Police, where they are fundamentally committed to resisting any attempts to get them to change.
 
Red Cat said:
No, that was what I was saying, that it is part of their political function. They also require a certain amount of legitimacy to carry out that political function though.

My main point was that the usual solution, training, education, the focus on information and attempts to change conscious individual attitudes, is useless, the work needed for any organisational change is on a different level.

eta you're right though andysays, I suppose I did come over as more optimistic than I actually am. My work is all about believing in the capacity to change even if it takes a long time and the change is minimal, so it does tend to colour my perspective.
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They only investigate eg mugging and burglary very sketchily, and there are many crimes they barely ever do anything about, eg cycling on the pavement. And as we've noted here on loads of threads they do fuck all about rape and other sex crime cases. It's very hard to see them gaining legitimacy through tackling crime when they themselves acknowledge they simply don't bother eg Police ‘decided not to investigate’ more crimes during coronavirus pandemic and everyone knows that once you stop doing something be it a daily five mile walk, a weekly meeting, a monthly paper or investigating crimes it's really hard to take them up again
 
So, Johnson says that he will "stop at nothing to put more rapists behind bars". Leaving aside the empty political rhetoric, you can see where the problem lies: it's all about the after-the-fact stuff. Not "stop at nothing to make women feel safe", or "stop at nothing to address the behaviours that lead to men becoming rapists". Just get them behind bars. By which time at least one woman will have been raped. But she doesn't matter - it's all about the rapists. And getting them behind bars.

And people vote for these fuckers...? :(
 
existentialist said:
So, Johnson says that he will "stop at nothing to put more rapists behind bars". Leaving aside the empty political rhetoric, you can see where the problem lies: it's all about the after-the-fact stuff. Not "stop at nothing to make women feel safe", or "stop at nothing to address the behaviours that lead to men becoming rapists". Just get them behind bars. By which time at least one woman will have been raped. But she doesn't matter - it's all about the rapists. And getting them behind bars.

And people vote for these fuckers...? :(
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I wish that bit was a bit snappier. If it made a good soundbite it might start to address the actual problem. Unfortunately as you say, behind bars, rapists, those people over there that are nothing like us, the assertive-sounding 'stop at nothing', these things all win again. Rather than addressing the actual question of how men become angry at women.
 
Good article by Karen Ingala Smith who runs a domestic violence charity on violence against women and girls. It’s all very well slagging off the police but we need to remember that they are operating in a world which is profoundly misogynist. They’re not outliers.

All women are controlled by men’s violence. Whether or not they are the ones on the receiving end, it affects every one of us. When we clutch our keys as we walk home at night, when we pick the safest route along well-lit streets but also when we worry about whether a new partner, or a troubled male relative, could become abusive: we fear the kitchen knife pointed towards us, or the hands around our neck.

I grew up in West Yorkshire in the 1970s, in the shadow of Peter Sutcliffe, known as the “Yorkshire Ripper”. We all knew, even children, about this bad man who was picking off women. And men’s violence against women was also around me as a child. It is there for so many of us — not just in public spaces but in intimate places too. That was one reason I have spent all my adult life working in specialist women’s services.

The deaths of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa have reignited a conversation about male violence, but it has focused on “stranger danger” when most women are killed by someone they know.

The Femicide Census, which I co-created with Clarrie O’Callaghan and which is supported by Freshfields, the law firm, and Deloitte, the auditors, annually publishes information about women who have been killed and the male perpetrators. We found that about 62 per cent of women killed by men are killed by current or former partners. About one in 12 are killed by strangers, roughly the same number as are murdered by their sons. Yet there hasn’t been any critical analysis of the danger sons pose to adult women; we never hear about “filial peril”. We don’t have an accurate picture of what men’s violence against women actually looks like in this country.

The census came about after I started my own record in January 2012, Counting Dead Women, which contemporaneously records female deaths at the hands of men. A young woman, Kirsty Treloar, who had been referred to Nia, the charity where I have been chief executive since 2009, was killed by the boyfriend she was trying to leave. I searched online to see what had happened to her. What I found instead was report after report of women who had been murdered. I have supported female victims of male violence for decades, yet the volume of crimes still surprised me. There was a phrase that kept appearing in these reports: “This was an isolated incident.” But there is nothing isolated about it. How could it be “isolated” when it was happening to so many women? And why were we not looking for the connections? That’s why I kept recording these deaths.

I was also angry that the government’s official data does not group together all the women killed by men. Even now, the Office for National Statistics records the sex of people who have been killed but not the sex of the person who killed them — so they don’t allow us to understand the difference between violence committed by men and violence committed by women. They only give you half the story.

You often hear the same, inaccurate, statistic: that two women a week are killed by men in England and Wales. That was the standard way murdered women were talked about — as a number. I wanted us to remember that they are human beings who are loved and missed. And recording all their names, I started to notice patterns: many older women are murdered and sexually assaulted during burglaries and women are often killed as they are either about to leave, or have just left, an abusive partner.

For many women, the moment they try to leave is incredibly dangerous. Staying with a violent man, horrific as this is, is the best survival strategy on offer for some women. Yet the places they would escape to, refuges, have had their funding cut for more than a decade and the expertise stripped out by allowing services to be delivered by the cheapest bidders, rather than specialist feminist organisations.

Young, professional, conventionally attractive, white women who are killed by strangers get the most attention but we must stop perpetuating this hierarchy of victims. I was really struck last week that in the judge’s sentencing remarks, he called Sarah Everard “a wholly blameless victim”. You can’t talk about her innocence without implicitly victim-blaming other women and we shouldn’t separate between women we empathise with and women we don’t. And women are killed by all kinds of men: from the unemployed to airline pilots and doctors — and, of course, police officers.

I think misogyny runs through the police. At least 15 serving or former police officers have killed women since 2009. The culture of the police needs fixing: it’s not a few bad apples; it’s a rotten orchard. We need an inquiry into institutionalised sexism in the police.

Killing a woman is not a gateway crime: it is not the first thing you do. If you murder a woman, you have usually been doing something abusive or criminal to women for a long time, you just haven’t been caught. And if Wayne Couzens is stage ten in violence against women, what are the police doing about officers, and other men, who are at stage three, four or five?

More broadly, we need to stop pussyfooting about naming men as perpetrators. Then to tackle the violence, we need a five-pronged strategy.

We need to focus on individual men, the perpetrators, and hold them to account. We must give women more options to leave. We should look at relationships and how those shape our culture. We need to ensure the police, the courts and social services are not institutionally sexist. Then we should address inequality: the objectification and sexualisation of women.

That is the only way anything will change.
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What we are talking about is a fundamental shift in the way "society" as a whole behaves.

I believe that has to start with education - teaching people & them learning that all the behaviours that allowed WC to develop into a murdering rapist are not acceptable.
Starting with all the inequalities and sexist objectification perpetrated by men & society in general.
 
Chilli.s said:
And looking back 10 or so years to the killing of Ian Tomlinson, the thug that did that used a variety of internal moves between different departments of the police to continue to work after a number of incidents involving excessive violence both at work and in his civilian life. This did culminate with sacking after he had killed someone. Lessons were quite plainly there to learn but were not.
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It puts me in mind of how the Catholic Church would often handle abuse cases.
The chief priority is clearly one of image management.
 
Well not accepting applicants with any type of conviction for a sexual offence would be a start. Also taking domestic violence seriously. Pruning the ranks of anyone with a conviction for either of these two categories of offence would be better.

There also cannot be any exceptions.
 
equationgirl said:
Well not accepting applicants with any type of conviction for a sexual offence would be a start. Also taking domestic violence seriously. Pruning the ranks of anyone with a conviction for either of these two categories of offence would be better.

There also cannot be any exceptions.
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Re: taking domestic violence seriously, I think the approach to that needs some really serious work. I know one copper whom I have spoken with about the experience of such interactions and it sounds incredibly hard and something needing a specialist attending with the officer (rather than just the officers attending, especially an all-male group), as well as extensive targeted training for the officer(s) attending. Women's Aid are working with my local force to improve things and it seems like maybe a start.
 
8ball said:
Re: taking domestic violence seriously, I think the approach to that needs some really serious work. I know one copper whom I have spoken with about the experience of such interactions and it sounds incredibly hard and something needing a specialist attending with the officer (rather than just the officers attending, especially an all-male group), as well as extensive targeted training for the officer(s) attending. Women's Aid are working with my local force to improve things and it seems like maybe a start.
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I was really impressed when I called the police out for DV - a man and woman attended and the follow up was with a specific team. It was the ongoing afterwards that they really fell down on (like not collecting his spit on my door so it became he said she said).
 
DaveCinzano said:
I suppose the people of North Yorks could count their luck that their Policing & Crime Commissioner is 'merely' an apologist for sexual predators with warrant cards; Cambridgeshire's Deputy PCC had himself been a sexual predator with a warrant card

www.theguardian.com

Cambridgeshire deputy police commissioner resigns over spy claims

Andy Coles accused of deceiving political activist into forming a sexual relationship while he was an undercover officer
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
a councillor:
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Still a councillor:

Councillor details - Councillor Andy Coles | Peterborough City Council

https://twitter.com/search?q=cllrandycoles&src=typed_query&f=live
 
wtfftw said:
I was really impressed when I called the police out for DV - a man and woman attended and the follow up was with a specific team. It was the ongoing afterwards that they really fell down on (like not collecting his spit on my door so it became he said she said).
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Like you I had a mixed experience. When my ex bust up my eldests face bad enough to need a child protection medical with photographs at the hospital they were good. They lent on me quite hard to encourage him to prosecute (he was 13 😱 I couldn’t believe he was made to choose tbh). But when we decided not to they were supportive unlike social services who were cunts about it.

But when he flung the youngest across his kitchen they were utterly useless. After five days of agonising about whether to call them I did, and the woman on the line was great. But when I came to go in and talk to them they ‘non crimed it’ and I was in and out within 10 mins I’d say.

The only time I ever called them about myself was years earlier when he dragged me across the kitchen floor by my hair and slammed the glass single pane door against my shoulder and cut all down my arm. I rang the police. A male PC called me back at 3am once the kids were asleep so obviously I didn’t say come round.

In a hopeful post note, my ex is now sober and no longer violent and my eldest mostly lives with him. So it just goes to show that things can change.
 
tim said:
The Speaker seems to be angry not because he was recruited by the police in the first place but because the Met sent him to work in the Houses of Parliament.

www.google.com

Commons Speaker wants Met Police to explain Wayne Couzens' Parliament work

The Commons Speaker wants to know how Wayne Couzens was deemed suitable to be on duty at Parliament.
www.google.com
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Yeah, the hypocrisy burns. It also makes me angry that the thing that clinched his whole life tariff was reportedly because he misused his warrant card, not just because of the act itself. Why can't that be automatic for anyone who rapes and/or murders someone in cold blood, cop or not?

www.mirror.co.uk

Wayne Couzens' whole-life tariff explained as only used for most heinous crimes

Sarah Everard's murderer Wayne Couzens joins a list of 60 other criminals who have been given a whole-life term in jail - a sentence reserved for the most serious of offences which fall into five categories
www.mirror.co.uk www.mirror.co.uk
 
Edie said:
Like you I had a mixed experience. When my ex bust up my eldests face bad enough to need a child protection medical with photographs at the hospital they were good. They lent on me quite hard to encourage him to prosecute (he was 13 😱 I couldn’t believe he was made to choose tbh). But when we decided not to they were supportive unlike social services who were cunts about it.

But when he flung the youngest across his kitchen they were utterly useless. After five days of agonising about whether to call them I did, and the woman on the line was great. But when I came to go in and talk to them they ‘non crimed it’ and I was in and out within 10 mins I’d say.

The only time I ever called them about myself was years earlier when he dragged me across the kitchen floor by my hair and slammed the glass single pane door against my shoulder and cut all down my arm. I rang the police. A male PC called me back at 3am once the kids were asleep so obviously I didn’t say come round.

In a hopeful post note, my ex is now sober and no longer violent and my eldest mostly lives with him. So it just goes to show that things can change.
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Sorry you went through that, but it's good to hear the situation resolved.
 
existentialist said:
Even though it's well-deserved, I think Dick resigning would just create a massive sideshow which will inevitably divert attention from the actual work which needs to be done.
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True. But she's presided over the shit-show. It happened on her watch. And she should never have been appointed after cops murdered Jean Charles de Menezes in cold blood on her watch and then tried to cover it up.

The totality of it all is that the public - whom the police are supposed to serve - are treated with contempt. And that's just not good enough. Dick must go.
 
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