Cressida Dick to step down as Met. Police Chief

Exactly - and you will always have a group of people in among the genuine people who are heel bent on causing problems.

The Met would save millions if they took a step back at marches /vigils/ etc but when people with an axe to grind - whether football supporters/ BLM/ Patestinian supporters/ ExtReb/ or just men looking for a fight.

Unfortunately when the stampede happens, or the innocent speaker is stabbed or the rape happens - the police are to blame. How do you police something which might or might not kick off ?? Imposssible to please all the people (virtually any) of the time as they mostly consist of 1000s of people with different wishes.

thedancingbear

I'm sorry - you can't simply say that the Sarah Everard vigil shows that the Met is institutionally misogynistic

This was a complex gathering. The vast majority were there for a peaceful vigil, but some were not.

There was one person who tried to take over the vigil for an anti-vax demonstration. There was one person who brought a can of spray paint and covered a police van with it. There were others who who began banging and crashing onto a police van.

The crowd dynamic changed at one point. The vast majority were fine - but a few were not.

How did you want the police to react to that?

Or should the police have not been present at all and hope for the best that members of the public don't get injured?

But the early reports suggested that Sadiq Khan was unhappy with her proposed strategy to effect change which ran to a few pages. The implication was that she hadn’t taken on board what had been asked of her. She appeared to resign because she felt she’d done enough and could do no more. And I think that fits with what we’ve seen of her response in other areas, a failure to read the room and respond accordingly. At this level you need to be able to operate on that level. Yes, blaming a woman for the behaviour of men feels inherently wrong but failing to recognise the seriousness of the issue and treat it accordingly would have forced his hand if she hadn’t jumped ship. So I see this as her failing, not his, her choice to refuse to engage.

I think there are about 30,000 met officers. How can one person be held responsible for than number of people.
The media repeat and repeat the problems, where is a list of the many good thing the met have done.
It would be a bit like the minister for education leaving because one teacher was prosecuted for having child porn on his pc.
Or the head of the armed forces resigning because one soldier did something bad.
Changes are needed but there is no one in the wings to implement them.

Well it’s a relief they’ve found a woman to blame for the men’s behaviour. I guess that’s one benefit they have when putting a woman in charge.

I think Cressida currently is being used to take pressure off Boris.
Offtobednow this would only make sense if Johnson had said 'no confidence' but it was Sadiq Khan who is Labour. I should think Khan's bad timing is causing much annoyance in Labour circles

It's always said that part of the answer to institutional racism is that forces need to mirror the communities they work within. I think the same approach needs to be taken with institutional misogyny.

I think the police should move, over a period of time, towards a 50:50 gender split. Given that men as a class are inherently misogynistic, I can't see that any formulation where men remain the majority can realistically shake its institutional bias.

This wouldn't be easy and it would take decades. I would anticipate a programme of positive discrimination: favouring them at recruitment; paying them more than male counterparts; and offering them increased flexibility on shift patters. I would remove some existing male officers from their posts.

You will no doubt complain that this would be unfair to the men in question. I don't care: it's not about their job security, it's about women being free from abuse from those who are meant to protect them. Men are the problem, not the solution, and they need to move over.

I'm a police officer.
I think CD had to go.

I don't hold her personally responsible. There are indications things were changing for the better under her watch and many of these vile officers joined and gained their foothold at a time when she had negligible influence over their careers. There's also the not insignificant fact that most chief officers rarely have a clue about what's really happening on the shop floor so to speak.

However, she was the figurehead of the Met. It's not so much about whether she's being scapegoated (in my view she is); it's about public confidence. So much damage has been done that the public have no faith in her ability to change it. Hell, even I have moments where I despair of the police and I am one! If I feel like that...

A new chief represents a new approach much more clearly in public consciousness. Public confidence is vital and more important than whether one top officer is being treated fairly. Policing is on a knife edge. What happens now will determine whether we can hang on to those principles of policing by consent or whether we become more ljke the forces of other countries, which would be awful. Police are people just like everyone else, but once trust and confidence goes conflict increases and an 'us and them' mentality takes over on both sides. That's dangerous both at micro level (people get hurt on both sides) and at macro level (social cohesion plummets). I desperately don't want that and I am so, so angry at Couzens, Carrick and their ilk for what they have done.

I don't recognise the appalling behaviors I read about among my colleagues. However, my career has been response based, where 70% of teams are made up of probationers - those new starters who habitually bring more inclusive mindsets than some of the veterans have displayed. I know that some of the more elite squads have issues (I have called put poor behaviour personally before anyone asks me, but I can't make a complaint about something I've only heard about fourth hand. That's on the officers who see it).

Sadly it will take 20 years or more to massively change policing as it starts with new recruits who become tomorrow's veterans. What they are taught now would (I believe) massively restore public faith if made public. However, there will still be predators (and incompetents) who slip through the net because quite frankly our recruitment processes are rubbish. IMO it's recruitment where we need to focus our efforts to achieve permanent change (in addition to weeding out those already in). We must get our house in order.

So what changes would you like to see the new chief implement?

Or maybe they could go with whoever has the necessary skills, strategy and vision for the role rather than play identity politics with such an important post.

And I don't think either Cressida Dick or Sadiq Khan would have much interest in taking the heat off Boris.

Yep, it's great - no doubt replaced with a white middle aged male who will be comfortable with 'locker room talk' and connect so much better with a load of politicians who are the bloody political image of him. I mean Boris is such an improvement on Theresa. Yay.

But labelling a whole organisation of 50,000 employees institutionally misogynistic is not necessarily helpful either.

That depends on whether it's accurate or not, doesn't it? I'm happy to call a spade a spade, what about you?

In terms of the WhatsApp messages these were small groups of officers in certain locations not a Met wide messaging service. They do not necessarily reflect the average police officer.

But these kinds of things cannot happen without a culture of misogyny. It was very clear that those officers knew they were on safe ground. As were the officers who made jokes around Wayne Couzens' sex offending. As were the officers who shared pictures of those poor women who were killed in victoria park. As were the officers who manhandled protesters at the Sarah Everard vigil. As were the officers who sexually abused Constancja Duff. They did these things because there was a culture that made it highly likely they would get away with it - that their colleagues would probably not rat them out because they either thought the same, or were too scared to behave otherwise.

Of course the senior leadership teams need to ensure that misogyny or tolerating abuse of women is unacceptable.

How's that working out for you then?

There will be officers working today breaking bad news to families following traffic accidents, working with victims of human trafficking, identifying men accessing images of child abuse, being spat at or sworn at in their daily job, working alongside social services etc.

But this is what they are paid to do. It is the bare minimum. No-one's suggesting it's an easy job but few are. You're presenting this as if it is going above and beyond. It doesn't for a moment excuse consistently and institutionally treating just about every vulnerable group like shit.

It’s also very convenient for Boris to have a high profile figure stepping down to take the pressure and media attention off him!

You're saying its a clear majority - so by definition it must be 51%+

And no - I don't see it everyday. The force i work for is not how you are describing it to be - unless you can show different.

And what threads I have been 'shouting women down' on?

As this is the best way to move anything forward by discussing ways to proceed in a better way or discuss possible changes.

How is coming on here over and over to deny the police are institutionally misogynistic 'moving anything forward'?

Every single thread you've contributed to has descended into you shouting women down. The same old paternalistic nonsense. Who is that helping?

^So, you're saying that 25,000+ new about the abusive comments made in the Konstancja Duff case and the whatsapp threads?

25,000+ new about Couzens and what he was doing?^

For god's sake. Of course I'm not saying that and you know it. Bog standard straw man bollocks.

The point, as anyone who is here in good faith would acknowledge, is that the Met is culturally misogynistic, such that the majority of PCs don't feel the need to call out this behaviour, and the minority that would are cowed by the majority into doing nothing.

But you know this, of course, because you see it every day.

Yes its me again - putting posts on a discussion forum to discuss things. As this is the best way to move anything forward by discussing ways to proceed in a better way or discuss possible changes.

And where have I denied women's experiences......?

There are about 50,000 police & police staff in the Met

So, you're saying that 25,000+ new about the abusive comments made in the Konstancja Duff case and the whatsapp threads?

25,000+ new about Couzens and what he was doing?

I don't think that any of this is right - but you can't justifiably say that its the majority that are involved.

And i do effect changes from the inside and have called out incidents that I have witnessed that are wrong and unprofessional - from the police and support agencies that we work with. Medical staff making inappropriate comments, teachers doing the same etc etc

Yes, a clear majority. I've evidenced this upthread. If most officers were not complicit, then it would not be possible for things like:

-the abuse of women at the Sarah Everard protest
-the abuse of Konstancja Duff
-the murder of Sarah Everard (bearing in mind he'd been let off for exposing himself, and colleagues recognised he was a sexual deviant and joked about it)
-the recent whatsapp threads that have come to light

to have happened. Because one of the 'majority' of decent coppers that exist only in your mind would have called it out.

But that never happens, does it? Why do you think that is?

Instead of coming back here (again, over and over) to deny women's experiences, why don't you toddle off and try to effect some sort of change from the inside?

So when you say its a clear majority - are you saying its 51% and more of officers in the Met?

However, if you look at the coppers who abused Konstanja Duff - and abused is certainly the right term - I believe a couple of them were women.

Cultural and institutional. However much you would prefer to close your eyes and believe otherwise.

This is true on one hand. But the main thing that has driven Dick out of office is her inability to stop what is a clear majority of met officers, abusing, insulting, belittling, and in some instances, raping and murdering women.

I presume this includes the 8,000 female police officers in the rapist stats.