2nd Met Police officer has been charged with rape

[Rinoachicken]

He worked in the same dept as WC.

It’s being very widely reported, except by the BBC.

AIBU to be sickened and wonder WHY the BBC are not reporting this?

Link: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/03/metropolitan-police-officer-charged-rape-hertfordshire?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I'm uncomfortable with the assumption that all police officers are complicit and turning a blind eye to rampant racism and misogyny. My DH is a police officer and specialises in investigating hate crime and domestic violence. When his work has put people behind bars for homophobic hate crime and helped women escape their abusers, his colleagues have celebrated his success.

Yes, I too know very good, decent police officers - male and female. I also know, second-hand admittedly - that there ARE some constabularies who are committed to making every effort to weed out this rot. I've seen the concerted efforts some are making in the avenue of racism as well.

But this is tantamount to the NAMALT defence. No, not every individual police officer is like that. It's not been seriously suggested that they are. But institutional misogyny (we'll leave racism to one side as that's aside from the point of this particular thread) IS rife in the police as an institution, a fact acknowledged even by some constabularies. The woeful response to women's fears from both the Met (flag down buses) and Boris effing Johnson (unsurprisingly) quite clearly illustrates why the police currently have a problem with both image, trust, and the underlying discourses which are causing trust to be eroded.

It has to be accepted before it can be tackled. Fortunately there are at least some police forces in the UK who acknowledge, accept, and are committed to this.

The fact that 'many police personnel are good people' is beside the point.

Link: Boris Johnson does not support making misogyny a hate crime www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58800328

"I think, to be perfectly frank, if you simply widen the scope of what you ask the police to do you'll just increase the problem." (BJ)

Can anyone make sense of this? How does it increase the problem?

Increase the problem of huuuuge queues for court.
Police not being able to keep on top of dealing with social media stuff in rape accusations.

Why would it do this?

So the quarter of all on duty police who are women are what - handmaidens to the sexist three quarters - that's quite a claim.

50 accusations of sexism such as wolfwhistling, groping, rude commenting, watching porn on the bus would put your rape case more months/ years away.

@Felix125 From a police point of view - first responders to a rape (rape trained officer) will always believe the victims account. So we immediately look to obtain evidence (their account, seize clothing, medical samples etc). Then they will be put with a support network (who are brilliant). The incident is crimed and passed to and investigating team

I am really glad that you do this, and I hope this is the norm but I can categorically say that this is NOT always the case. I know someone who reported a rape - the police went and spoke to the alleged perpetrator first, then turned up at her house to take a statement. When she was part way through they literally just got up and left half way through. In a "this is nonsense we aren't wasting any more time with this" way, not because they had received an urgent radio call or anything.
now - I am sure this is not in line with best practice (to say the least) but it happened. I don't want to put women of reporting rape - and I hope that in most cases it is handled in the way you describe but that is definitely not always the case.

It was 15 years ago, so maybe things have improved. I hope so.

I quite agree that they are shocking examples throughout the police and i don't try deny it or justify it.

From our force and its neighbouring forces, the feedback we receive from survivors & the support agencies working with survivors have been positive.

Now there may be a question to ask as to why other forces are failing? Are we doing something that other forces are not? Have we identified the inherent problem, resolved it and moved forward

Does anyone have information on the turnover of police recruits by gender, sexuality, racial group? It's that sort of information which tells you about an organisation's culture far better than individual's saying they didnt see a problem.

sorry, rogue apostrophe

There will be somewhere on the internet a site which will give you the answer per area.

I think our force is about 70 - 30 percentage male to female cops, although that will vary from department to department. Front line is more male weighted, but other department such as CID, Cybercrime, sexoffender, drugs - tend to be more female.

Police staff is the other way around - its about 70 - 30 female to male. So these will be the investigating teams - such as prisoner handling etc etc

Our shift at present is about 50/50. Last night we had exactly 5 male cops and 5 female cops.

@Felix125 That is useful information. I think what GnomedePlume was interested in is turnover specifically - so frontline police officers could be 70:30 male:female, but within that the female officers could be on average leaving the force/moving to a different role twice as quickly as male officers (or vice versa). And similarly for minorities - a police force could have 10% of its officers describe themselves as black British - but when you look closer most of them leave within a year (random example, not saying that's the case). It would be really interesting to have that sort of information although I imagine it would be difficult to collect (and there might be lots of factors behind it). Its the sort of thing that More or Less would be good at...

@mustlovegin

What point are you trying to make OP?

We need a lot more police on the street to deal with all sort of issues and they need to be properly funded.

If one, two or however many officers are not up to scratch it needs to be dealt with, same as with any public service. That's all there is to this, let's not blow this out of proportion

This.

@Pixxie7

To take it out on children whose parents are police officers is completely inappropriate as is presuming that all police are corrupt or worse. Their are thousands of police who are decent men and women doing a difficult job. Just the same as there are thousands of nurses and doctors who don’t set out to kill people. This has the potential to get way out of hand.

Inagree

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2021/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2021

Includes interesting wastage data for police in the UK.