To think that the information we are getting about Wayne Couzens highlights how far men will go to protect other men?

[BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz]

I've always felt uncomfortable about Male judges issuing paltry sentences to Male sexual offenders, on the occasions it does happen.

And now it is emerging how disgusting WCs behaviour has been, knowingly, throughout his time in the police force.

Men (I'll add the old NAMALT here) protect and justify the actions of other men, in the main.

Is this because they themselves are depraved and guilty of similar thoughts or even actions? Or is it some sort of "brotherhood" thing? Could it be that they just want to keep the power they have as a group?

Feels like women are never going to win (and by win I mean, be treated as an equal).

MN - I have specifically put this in AIBU. I do not wish for this to be moved to Feminism.

In simple terms it's 'bros before h**s'.

I wrote some long posts on another thread I can grab them.

Remember this is not surprising or new.

It's well known that flashers escalate.
It's clear that society and the authorities see indecent exposure generally as trivial. Upsetting maybe. But v common and non contact. Not a big deal. Laugh it off/ don't make a fuss. An ex police officer said it on telly while this case was being reported.

...

Aw fuck I've pasted a massive thing! Sorry sorry.

I'll ask for it to be deleted.

For years women esp feminists have been saying look these 'low level' crimes need to be properly recorded investigated. Taken seriously

Agreed we need to tackle the low level stuff. It’s awful that some men shield or excuse other men’s shitty behaviour.

I have a thread in feminism actually
Was disgusted to read in the guardian that senior police think he is a one off. It's so massively minimising of the predatory behaviour of some men, and the fact the police is attractive to men who want to abuse power.
That's before we even start with the total inability to connect "low level " sex offences with the offenders objectifying women and feeling entitled to sex, pushing boundaries. Its not a surprise some of these men escalate and I don't understand why as a society we don't see indecent exposure etc as red flags and intervene earlier to prevent this kind of thing happening as much as possible

I honestly believe it comes down to men either (1) thinking along the same lines as the offender - terrifying or (2) not seeing women as worth upsetting apple cart for - sickening.

Oh my goodness, I knew he’d done other stuff but hadn’t heard the detail.

I agree with all the posts above. The “amnesty” is a great idea. But men will never agree because they’ll say there’s a risk do women ganging up on people.

@NiceGerbil

Aw fuck I've pasted a massive thing! Sorry sorry.

I'll ask for it to be deleted.

No, don't. You made some v good points.

Gerbil, I'm glad you posted all of those messages, hadn't seen a lot of that before. It's shocking that he was able to join the police force

Women work, we pay taxes, we bring up the nation's children. But crimes against us are constantly overlooked or minimised. It's getting worse, not better.

Everything about this case is horrifying and terrifying. There was a very recent thread on MN about flashers and how they are everywhere.
All these perverts being laughed off when anyone or more of them could escalate at anytime.
Our local police told a women's running group that they were aware of a flasher but didn't believe he was a threat.
No doubt they'll just wait for something to happen before they do anything.
Black lives matter (and rightly so), but us? No one gives a fuck.

No, don't delete Gerbil's post MN.

Fucking hell, that makes horrific reading.

Where was the due diligence when employing him? It's no bloody wonder the Chief Constable giving the press conference looked and sounded visibly shaken.

She should be. She employed him.

There’s another thread running about the police being called to deal with medical/mh issues.

The police are overstretched. So are ambulance, and the police are picking up many calls which can be dealt with by health services, so “minor” offences like flashing and burglary can’t be attended as the immediate risk is with the suicidal woman or the unconscious man is a park.

Funding the police and ambulance properly will go a long way to being able to deal with actual crimes like this.

Having said that, the met do seem to be dragging themselves very slowly into modern policing.

You can’t ruin a man’s career or his reputation just because he’s tried to have bit of a laugh with some uptight woman who can’t take a joke. And it is only women he’s done it to. It’s not like he’s made any men feel uncomfortable enough to report him. What does it matter?

And this is repeated up and down the country, in workplaces in every industry. Women don’t matter. It’s not sexual harassment; it’s women with no sense of humour, or feminists, or women with grudges who are using #Metoo to bring a good man down. It’s not sexual assault unless she’s hit over the head and dragged off by a stranger.

@BlackAlys

No, don't delete Gerbil's post MN.

Fucking hell, that makes horrific reading.

Where was the due diligence when employing him? It's no bloody wonder the Chief Constable giving the press conference looked and sounded visibly shaken.

She should be. She employed him.

I don't think she personally employed him? Although generally I'm surprised she hasn't resigned by now; she has minimised or denied so many issues with the Met.

In this case, how much of it is due to him being male vs a police officer though?

There is very much a culture of "us vs the world" in policing that means they protect their own no matter how repugnant the actions. Lots of talk of "Blue family". Sometimes that's positive when they rally around someone injured on duty, other times it's toxic when they close ranks for someone who's committed violence.

Both current and former police openly make that observation. This mindset of starting to see everybody outside of policing as "bad" and "out to get us", and therefore becoming unable or unwilling to listen when an outsider says a police officer has done something wrong.

There were some high profile examples of that last year where police officers were filmed abusing their powers and when challenged basically took the position that any criticism/challenge from a voice outside of policing is wrong & can be ignored. By default "if you're making a complaint about a police officer you must be making a vexatious complaint" type attitude. Or "I wouldn't be interacting with you in my role as a police officer if you weren't a bad person, so I don't care about anything you have to say" .

That said, it is also unusual for juries to convict police officers and when they do it is usually for a lesser offence (e.g. the police officer who killed Dalian Atkinson was convicted of manslaughter not murder and even then that was met with widespread surprise and was the first time in decades I think).

If you look at the type of statements Police Federation reps consistently make in defense of utterly indefensible, sickening actions by police officers that pretty much sums up the "Blue family" culture.

So much so that I find it difficult to reconcile the statements from the Met police about being sickened and so on by this case, because normally they're fine with covering up for their own.

You even see it on here too sometimes where some posters who are in policing will attempt to silence any critical discussion no matter how valid or measured with cries of "police bashing!" Or "not all police are like that" (well, obviously - it's rare to see anybody claim "all police" ).

@NiceGerbil

Aw fuck I've pasted a massive thing! Sorry sorry.

I'll ask for it to be deleted.

No don’t get it deleted please

Some excellent points

Ive really enjoyed a lot of your posts over the last few weeks/months

I agree. Please don't ask for it to be deleted.

If you look at the list of police officers who have been sacked far to many of them are for inappropriate behaviour towards women ranging from using witnesses details to harass them right through to rape. The police need to have a serious look at the psychological testing that recruits go through because it isn't picking up sexual predators

nice is the dogs bollocks for awesome posts imo

@QuentinBunbury

nice is the dogs bollocks for awesome posts imo

Yes…can’t disagree with that

The mutts nuts as it were 😀

He did what? He shot a child in the testicles?

@NiceGerbil that almost read like freeform poetry, I enjoyed it too

I think everyone who knew “something” was wrong and didn’t flag it should be charged. Not necessarily imprisoned (unless they knew he was guilty of a crime) but enough that it flags on a background check and will impact on them working with children or vulnerable adults. Starting tomorrow that’ll be a hell of a lot of people get getting charged but I can’t see what else will change the thinking. Will allow dot to be joined too and that will provide the police with evidence of how these “unique circumstances” come to be.

@QuentinBunbury

nice is the dogs bollocks for awesome posts imo

I agree 😍

I have reported my cut and paste error so if you don't want it to go I can try and cancel?

FYI I think that loads of women want to talk about these sorts of things and while the feminism board is good there are conversations that I think would be good to happen on the more widely read boards.

So please do come by the feminism chat board if you like- I post a lot on there.

With the recent reshuffle of the board anything about gender/ sex etc isn't on the chat board any more.

@NiceGerbil

Aw fuck I've pasted a massive thing! Sorry sorry.

I'll ask for it to be deleted.

Please don't, its useful