Police advising women not to walk alone at night

[Bubbinsmakesthree]

I’ve seen a lot of friends outraged at the Met police locally advising women not to walk alone at night in the days following the disappearance of Sarah Everard. I’ve seen a posts along the lines of ‘how about telling men not to attack women instead?’

I absolutely agree with the wider point that we should be asking the question “how do we make it safe for women?” not “how do women stay out of danger?”

But in this case, was the police’s advice not just the equivalent of advising people to stay out of the water following a shark attack?

I’m so upset and angry about Sarah Everard but I cannot get incensed about the police advising women to take precautions when an unknown attacker may have still been in the area.

It's bloody scary when you feel like you can't even trust the police to keep you safe

Please, let's not taint the whole police service because of one incident

@C8H10N4O2

Place a curfew on men then. Job done

That's disproportionate. You can't blame a whole group for the actions of one person. Most men do not murder strangers.

Bollocks.

I'm so utterly sick of NAMALT. Tough shit. Its not "proportionate" that half the population has to live in fear.

How about for a short period men face some restrictions. They don't even have to deal with the fear, just the restrictions for a while. Because bluntly the majority of men do subscribe to the attitudes and behaviours that lead to assaults and abuse and excuse them.

Women have been visibly trying to reclaim the streets for half a century and men, including lefty liberal men who go the whole mile by clicking a like on twitter then unclicking it because the tweet wasn't by an approved lefty have done fuck all to make it any safer for my daughters than it was for me.

Youre chatting bullocks. If you met some of the women from one of my nearby social housing block (when I was living 2 mins away from them - moved 2 years ago), youd realise that quite a few of them are absolute violent brutes.

‘Please, let's not taint the whole police service because of one incident’

It’s not one incident though. There is now an investigation into why the recent indecent exposure incident carried out by the accused did t result in an arrest.

So that is at least two police incidents that led to this murder.

There is a culture of police not taking sexual violence seriously.

Namalt is like the"all lives matter" response.

It's denial of a reality to make them personally feel better and that the problem is in actually minimal.

Talk of a curfew is laughable.

Are some of you forgetting that a criminal doesn't follow the narrative, hence why they are a criminal.

Did the ban on handguns stop gun crime, nope.

Have any drug laws curbed the sale and use of them, nope.

You can educate a person not to be a rapist or murderer FFS, these people have always existed and always will.

A good starting point would be a judicial system that isn't so soft and that doesn't favour rehabilitation.
Long sentences for sexual and violent offences.

loads of trolls on here liking the opportunity to spout their hatred, won't name them to give them oxygen.
unfortunately, men who have it in their 'DNA' or whatever will commit these crimes and won't be converted by being told not to , nor will they be deterred, as said by sensible PP, by the threat of legal punishment.

That fact that we shouldn’t have to live in a world which requires it doesn’t stop it being good advice. People shouldn’t steal, but some do, so best advice is that I lock my car doors at night. People should stop when they see you walking out onto a zebra crossing, but they might not, so why wouldn’t you look before stepping out. There is a difference between who is to blame and possible contributory factors. If a drunk driver runs me over and I happen to have been in his path it’s his fault, but the fact I was in the wrong place at the wrong time is one of the reasons I was hit. It’s in no way my fault, but if there had have been any steps I could have taken to make sure I wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time, then I can’t see how I’d be ill advised to take them

⬆️ what she said

@Gringlewald

That fact that we shouldn’t have to live in a world which requires it doesn’t stop it being good advice. People shouldn’t steal, but some do, so best advice is that I lock my car doors at night. People should stop when they see you walking out onto a zebra crossing, but they might not, so why wouldn’t you look before stepping out. There is a difference between who is to blame and possible contributory factors. If a drunk driver runs me over and I happen to have been in his path it’s his fault, but the fact I was in the wrong place at the wrong time is one of the reasons I was hit. It’s in no way my fault, but if there had have been any steps I could have taken to make sure I wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time, then I can’t see how I’d be ill advised to take them

Yes. In every other area of crime, we're advised on mitigating our chances of being affected. And no-one says "why should I have to lock my car/lock my front door/not leave my wallet in my back pocket?"

“Lock your cars” really isn’t the same as “women, don’t go out alone after dark” though is it.

@Gringlewald

That fact that we shouldn’t have to live in a world which requires it doesn’t stop it being good advice. People shouldn’t steal, but some do, so best advice is that I lock my car doors at night. People should stop when they see you walking out onto a zebra crossing, but they might not, so why wouldn’t you look before stepping out. There is a difference between who is to blame and possible contributory factors. If a drunk driver runs me over and I happen to have been in his path it’s his fault, but the fact I was in the wrong place at the wrong time is one of the reasons I was hit. It’s in no way my fault, but if there had have been any steps I could have taken to make sure I wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time, then I can’t see how I’d be ill advised to take them

Those things aren’t comparable. It doesn’t cost you money or limit the jobs you can take or restrict your freedom to lock your car doors or look when you cross the road. It does cost women money if they feel they have to take cabs everywhere, it limits their job prospects if they’re too scared to walk in the dark to take a job which might involve it, and it hampers their freedom on both counts.

And surely the point is that being careful and responsible, making sure you aren’t in the wrong place at the wrong time, and trying to minimise your risk of being harmed by a man doesn’t actually work, does it? You can be careful and responsible and never get too drunk or wear revealing clothing or walk alone after dark and still end up one of the 100-and-some women each year who are murdered by their husbands or partners, or one of the thousands who are raped by a man they knew and trusted. You can be careful and responsible and still end up like any one of the women who decided to be sensible and take a taxi rather than walk and fell victim to John Worbuoys; or Rachel Nickell or Lin Russell, both murdered as they walked with their children and dogs in affluent, family-friendly neighbourhoods one morning; or Suzy Lamplugh who disappeared in broad daylight as she just went about her work; or Sarah Everard who was taken as she walked along a busy trunk road and major bus route, and for whom it seems likely or at least very possible that her killer used his position as a police officer to coerce her into following him somewhere or getting into his car.

We can do something which doesn’t involve anyone having to restrict their life “just in case”, and focus on tackling male violence and what causes it.

@Advic3Pl3as3

“Lock your cars” really isn’t the same as “women, don’t go out alone after dark” though is it.

No-one has told women not to go out after dark. OP thinks that some door-to-door police might have told women living in the exact area not go to out while the murderer was on the loose. But even that is anecdotal. Friends told her that.

I think it’s shocking. I was 16, walking down a main road, several buses go along the road and a lot of cars. It’s a bright road. It was 8.30pm, I was walking home from my friends house. I was pulled and dragged from the main road down a side street and into communal gardens of a block of flats by 3 boys from my school and raped. It was 8.30pm, not a time I’d consider that late, especially given I was on a main road. I’d walked home alone later than that in the past. I’ve always considered myself fairly streetwise and know what to do when I’m out, especially alone. There’s no excuse whatsoever for these things happening. And the idea that the person it happened to is somehow responsible is ludicrous

I had a homeless man sleeping under our decks and we didn’t know about it, unusually I go to work at 3:30 am in the morning and I could have been raped. I found out about it when my husband and I thought to give a ring spotlight a try. And there he was. I thought well maybe it is just a one time thing and he just needed a place to sleep, but he kept coming back. We called the police and they caught him. Asked us if we wanted to press charges but we told them no, we just want him to sleep somewhere else. He never came back but I did see him elsewhere. Found out the homeless man was my neighbor’s ex boyfriend and he was actually stalking him. Police were called again and they arresting him. Who knows he wanted to kill him?

Oh have we got to the point where women's bodies are compared to cars?

Excellent.

Of course there are things that can be done. The posters who have made the point that these men escalate has not been addressed as far as I can see.

They don't start with rape abduction or murder. They start with lower level stuff and escalate. The sort of stuff that society says are pretty trivial and the police aren't very interested in. And also for those reasons is not reported much.

If women were encouraged to report the wankers etc and it was taken seriously then some of these men would be off the streets before they got to the really awful stuff.

These men are often prolific as well.

On the police point. Police officers have done all sorts of stuff in the past. Coercing sex from vulnerable victims. Committing DV. I mean there's lots I can't be bothered to Google.

When they say shocked it's a copper I'm not shocked at all. It's a bloke. Blokes can be dodgy. Being a police officer doesn't change that!

I think we have to accept women are more vulnerable and attacks of men on women are far more likely than it is the other way round. All this modern woman thinking is total BS. Im not saying men never get attacked by women but the percentage of men attacking /raping women has always been higher. Think people need to accept this and take advice to keep ourselves safe and not take it offensively.

Cue huge numbers of men identifying as women so they can carry tasers🙄
(for the record I feel alarmed at the idea that members of the public can carry tasers)

Same here.

More weapons leads to more violence - not less, even if those weapons are in the hands of victims.

Violent men don't have a "This is sufficient force" cut-off point - they don't care how much damage they cause. If a woman even attempts to hurt them, it enrages them further. What might've been a rape becomes a murder.

Women aren't used to physically fighting (something that most boys do at least a few times in their lives). They theoretically know where to kick etc, but either freeze or don't have the skill to aim a blow.

Many years ago I did a few self-defence classes. Some of the women were "If anyone touches me I'll cripple him" etc. The instructor said - You can't beat a man in a fight. All you can do is buy yourself some time to escape. And you must not hold back. Hit, kick, gouge, bite as HARD as you can. You are relying on pain and surprise to give you a few seconds grace. Enough time to get away.

Women are, apparently, very squeamish about sticking their thumbs into someone's eyeball. The men who attack them aren't.

I hate this message. It makes me really cross. I struggle to understand how this can be deemed acceptable, why aren't all the other messages on this thread being used instead?

I walk home, I have always done it. I feel safe. Plus I've also considered the risk, of being attacked, raped. But I'm just not prepared to not do it, to live my life in fear. No.

It saddens me that the default is to send this message. The Met Police? Really? Who made this decision?

I’d be much happier if the Met put out a statement saying that any violence against women, starting with harassment and not limited to face to face harassment but including online threats, will be treated extremely harshly - and then, of course, to actually do this.

@Carycy

Why don’t they put a curfew on men when there is a suspected attacker in the area? Then a perpetrator would stick out like a sore thumb? Because they couldn’t possibly mess with men’s freedoms?!? If they did maybe more would be done about it.

Yy to this

Could you imagine the outrage? That men were being affected by it? That men would have to change how they live because of the vile actions of others?

Yes. In every other area of crime, we're advised on mitigating our chances of being affected. And no-one says "why should I have to lock my car/lock my front door/not leave my wallet in my back pocket?

No many other areas of crime do you have to prove the crime actually happened to you and you didn't want it. Nor does your previous behaviour deem the crime acceptable.

You won't have to prove you didn't want to be hit by a car when crossing a zebra crossing. Nor would the fact previously you crossed the road where there wasn't a crossing mean that it's ok you got hit by a car this time.

Nor does the fact you left your car on locked once ot twice before mean you are totally ok with it being stolen when it was locked

Just because you have been know to drink a lot when out with friends doesn't mean a drink drivier running you over makes them not guilty.

With othe crimes its not ingrained in every person that the chances of you not being belived is high. Nor that the crime was an action was in fact a problem isn't there.

Whilst a person might to told they shouldn't have been in a certain place if they mugged, its unlikely considered the mugging could have prevented by not wearing shorts or walking differently. That carrying their money in a certain pocket meant the mugger couldn't help it because that made then feel unable not to mug, Or that it was just a harmless banter/a joke. Probably wouldnt have to prove that thier being in that area didnt mean they liked being mugged or wanted it.

What else can they advise? Men are predators. If you don't want to be mugged, raped, murdered, it's good advice. It's the Met acknowledging that men are a danger. Are they doing anything about preventing men becoming criminals? No. Because that shit comes from how the child and now adult was reared. That's where they should look in the long term but in the mean time, yes, women are in danger walking alone at night.

Something came up on my Facebook feed earlier by Paolo Coehlo.

If you expect the world to be fair with you because you are a nice person, you’re fooling yourself. That’s like expecting the lion not to eat you because you didn’t eat him.

Women need to realise that men are like lions. They're predators.

There is denial in society (by women) that men are different to women. It's blaringly obvious to me, but there seems to be a blind ignorance insisting that women and men are the same. They're not. Yes, men are a danger. Not all men. But a lot of them.

If a police force considers it reasonable to advise 50% of its residents to stay indoors at night because they might get attacked, surely they have utterly failed in their duty and are deliberately stoking fear? Why are women not raging against the police and those that fund them?

And that is even before we get to the fact that the suspect was a serving police officer who had already been investigated for indecent exposure.

The current tack on this in social media and politics seems to be the usual one of women raging against men as a class. And as usual this will change nothing. We need to direct our anger at those with the responsibility to create a safe society and the power to implement changes to do so.