I'm in no way trying to suggest that all male police officers are perfect and I have no doubt that everything coming out about him are completely true. What I have repeatedly said is that things are changing for the better and have been changing at speed for at least the last 5 years. I have no doubt he picked up that nickname a long time ago, for potentially many reasons knowing the dark humour many officers have (I'm not condoning it), many of the stories of misogynistic behaviour about various officers seems to have happened a long time ago. Still doesn't make it right but it has to be acknowledged that things are changing.
In the force I work in recently it was reported that a group of young student officers had a private social media group where sexist comments were routinely made. All of the officers in the group were sacked, including and officer who was in the group who never commented... he was sacked because he didn't report the group. These hearings are all public but you don't see the press reporting on them.
There are about 130'000 officers and moral is on its knees. I spend a lot of time having to watch the most graphic horrendous child sexual abuse videos in order to grade them to lock up paedophiles, you'd be shocked how common it is.. I guarantee you probably know several men who view it it's so common, yet the public are so completely blind to the daily routine absolutely horrific work many officers are dealing with daily, and now the media are whipping the public into a frenzy making an officers daily work even harder. Officers deal with severely mentally ill people everyday. Officers receive absolutely no training in how to deal with people, I've personally stopped 2 people throwing themselves off high places, no training in how to talk to them, just had to do what we all do and tried my best.. if they had jumped I'd have been investigated and potentially sacked if a person who wasn't there decided I didn't say the right things. Every job you go to you don't know what you're going to find when you get there. That's why officers often appear to have defences up ... you learn it's safer to go in defensive and get softer than it is to go in soft and suddenly find yourself being attacked. This is EVERY DAY. And every officer joins thinking that they'll do it differently, they'll be the cop that can go in soft... you learn quickly for your own and other people's safety to be on high alert when attending everything.
WC was a fucking monster. It will come out in the wash if they messed up his vetting. But even things like that aren't simple. How do you check the social media pages that haven't been declared on vetting forms, are in a different names and have privacy settings? You can't.
Routing out the bad apples takes time. Not every person will be sacked if they've only been reported for an inappropriate comment, but when they're reported for another one, the first one on record will be held against them and flag a potential issue. And as I keep trying to say, the bad old days are well on their way out... things that people used to let slide now people report, because they know the force will have their back these days.