Women must resist arrest by any male police officer and demand the presence of a policewoman

they can start by reviewing and issuing very public guidance on the rules around being arrested, and what our rights are.

They can start by taking the decals off their cars that visibly demonstrate they're signed up to an ideology that has no respect for women's rights at all.

I'm also extremely angry today. I don't know what the solution is, but I think police forces need to be making a huge visible, loud effort right now to reassure women, and they can start by reviewing and issuing very public guidance on the rules around being arrested, and what our rights are.

I don't want to make life harder for the majority of the honest rank and file, but the police as a whole need to get their house in order.

I'm probably in a minority of one but I don't even think that video was that bad. Coming in cold to a situation, officer sees colleague being attacked. Might suspect a knife. Neutralises situation with presumably no long term effects. Was it necessary. No, probably not, but was it excessive? Only marginally.

I’m shocked that he was allowed out and about with his warrant card

Police officers are not employees who clock on and off. They are not seen as "off duty" at any point. They don't have to carry their warrant cards with them, but many do as they know they may need it.

As an example, police officers ger highly subsidised travel on many forms of public transport, but the flip side of this is that they are expected to get involved in any troubles on that form of public transport.

*your not you’re

We are moving towards a situation similar to America where people just do not trust the police to keep them safe.

Black people assume the police will shoot them before they’ve even had a chance to speak. We are now to assume as women we may be abducted and murdered if stopped and arrested. Personally I have told everyone I know, including my kids to No Comment in any interview the police want to conduct. They never want to hear you’re side, what they want to do is build a case against you with your words helping them to do so.

In this situation I just wish she’d kicked up a stink and caused a crowd to form. We are too bloody timid in the face of authority. After this case they’d have to drag me kicking and screaming into a police car and I’d hope a passer by might have questioned the copper and potentially saved her life.

Saying something is "unworkable" means it's currently unworkable now. We cannot turn around and say that as of tomorrow morning, lone male officers cannot arrest lone females.

There are not enough police officers to always work in pairs, and there are not enough female police officers to attend every arrest of a lone female. If this was instituted tomorrow it would be chaos.

That's not to say that the underlying suggestion isn't good. The police need to get immensely better at their vetting process, they need to get immensely better at their internal policing, they need to get immensely better at understanding how to deal with the public perception that the police are a threat.

But with the police as vastly underfunded and understaffed as it is, a knee-jerk reaction like this will actually have a negative effect. Police officers are already overworked and under enormous stress and all we will see is officers leaving in droves, which will exacerbate the problems.

We need this public reaction to the horror of Sarah's death. We need a wider conversation about the police. But as with everything else in the UK, it needs money to fix. We need to force the government to have this conversation and find the money.

More female police officers would be an obvious solution, but the reality is a lot of women wouldn’t want to become police officers, because the majority of the criminals you’d deal with are men, often violent and dangerous men.

According to PACE a cop may only handcuff a suspect if they have an objectively reasonable belief that handcuffing is necessary to prevent the suspect running away or causing harm to themselves or others. You are entitled to ask the police officer why they believe handcuffing is necessary. For me, I’m shocked that he was allowed out and about with his warrant card, police belt and handcuffs. He also ordered handcuff locks from Amazon. I would propose in addition a rule that off duty cops are not allowed any equipment and would re design the handcuffs so you can’t purchase third party locks online.

I already had a conversation with DS last night on the back of watching the news report and the images of Sarah being kidnapped.

DS has just passed his driving test and I told him not to stop for an unmarked vehicle, instead to drive to the nearest police station or somewhere with CCTV like a petrol station.

If I had a daughter I’d be telling her that if she was approached and “arrested” by a male, not in inform and in an unmarked car, to scream the fucking place down.

Won’t resisting arrest just result in more police brutality?
I don’t think this is a solution at all.

This wouldn't work OP. The change which needs to come from this case is that "minor" sex offences need to be taken seriously again.

That's interesting although a little odd as the bar diagram clearly shows (for women):
46% violence against the person (as you indicate)
19% theft offences (that probably covers a very broad range I don't fully understand)
08% drug offences
07% criminal damage and arson
07% public order offences (etc.)

For the large scale brawls, I'd hope that several officers would be in attendance and it wouldn't be the lone officer scenario.

I got a massive bollocking the first time around and was threatened with arrest for failing to stop. Really aggressive chap who I had to make a complaint about. Apparently the fact that I'd rung 999 via bluetooth on my car to advise of the situation, and they'd confirmed it was okay for me to proceed as planned wasn't a mitigating circumstance at all. My wishing to ensure my safety wasn't "normal" and I was being "paranoid for no reason". Clearly not!

One of the many problems with this as an idea is that it wouldn’t really have stopped Sarah Everard’s murder would it?

He wasn’t in uniform, wasn’t working and had she kicked off, due to him being on his own, it’s likely that passers by would just have thought she was resisting arrest and ignored it anyway.

One of the things the police could do (still wouldn’t have stopped this incident, but would help in many, many others) is make bodycams mandatory and remove the ability for officers to choose when they’re switched on or off. If individual POs know that their cam, plus those of their colleagues near them, will always be recording then they’re much less likely to risk doing something illegal when on duty.

Things like toilet breaks could be accommodated by the officer calling in to the OPs room where the camera could be remotely switched off for a short period and then back on again.

But, the police doesn't record sex of victims or suspects accurately. So we have no way of knowing how many women are affected by current policing approaches.

Stonewall have achieved a very impressive fudge.

Helpful if I attach the link and screenshot!
<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/938360/statistics-on-women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2019.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiSvKXvvKbzAhW-A2MBHc_7A3IQFnoECAQQBg&usg=AOvVaw17FDjzTYbJ4ifj0_o-SJFG" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">link here

@embarrassingadmissions these are UK Government figures. Seems women are far less likely to get arrested than men (which tallies with what I've experienced) and that its most likely to be for violent offending. Again this tallies with my experience; I haven't arrested many women but those that I have were either for drunken nightclub brawls with other women, brawls over a boyfriend with other women, or for aggression against children (least often). There's a handful of shoplifters but in general these aren't dealt with by arrest unless they're a habitual shoplifter who won't attend an interview.

I've never arrested someone for sex work and the Met generally treats prostitution as a welfare and exploitation issue these days.

About 10 years ago I was stopped by a lone policeman after midnight on a country road for driving a transit van. He said he thought it was suspicious that I was driving a van at midnight in the village where there had been burglaries, his behaviour was a bit “off”and creepy.
I remember thinking about how I would never have stopped for any other man and was glad to drive away.

This is a good idea . Certainly there should be a 50 .50 male / female balance in the ranks. Something like a mini dashcam to send video automatically might be a deterrent too. I have no animus against the police btw. My own grandfather was a cop.