That the police don't vet their officers

[OneTC]

And if not, why not?

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-64289461

As a female cop I despair at the damage these kind of cops and the force failings have on public opinion of the police, and that's without going in to my feelings for the victims of the corrupt officers.
What’s your feelings on a culture of sexism and bullying in the police force as a woman? I’m genuinely interested how your experience has been. @TheOriginalEmu

In complete honesty, I haven't seen it personally or really heard about it from friends in other teams in my Force, not to say it doesn't happen of course.

I'm a regular PC on the streets in a team full of the same, all I see is everyone doing their job as best they can, both male and female- that's not to say everyone gets it right all of the time but there are so many variables and sometimes you just can't protect people as much as you would like. My male colleagues (from what I see) absolutely care about the female public and on a daily basis will do everything in their power to protect them.

Obviously I know there are officers who abuse this trust and power, I can't tell you how much I condemn it for a multitude of reasons, I've just not come across them personally yet.

The job is hard and frustrating in ways that people don't see or understand unless they work it week in and out, the worst I can say about higher rank supervision is they are so far removed from the day to day that it feels that all they care about is figures- moral and safety of a regular cop is absolutely bottom priority, that is the only criticism internally that I have but this isn't aimed at female only cops or individuals, it's across the board.

The police force should be dominated by women with very few men being permitted to join. And with all the top jobs being women too.

@SwordToFlamethrower a flaw with that argument is that Dame Cressida Dick was the last Met Commissioner and was sacked because she was failed to deal with her errant officers. I understand that a manager doesn't want to lose the dressing room but she was meant to run the Met for the benefit of the people who live in London not to keep herself in a well remunerated job.

Who do you suggest? Catherine Cawood?

gold22

I agree with everything you have said

I'm a male response officers of 22 years - my team is about 50/50 male to female staff - as are the shifts that we cross with. I have not seen any of the officers I work with 'cross the line' and if they do I would call it out.

We are all too busy with the jobs coming in and safeguarding issues, mental health cases and missing from homes - and the never ending case files and CPS action plans!

@limitedperiodonly regarding then last sentence of your post, you can suspect all you like…..it doesn’t make you correct.

@Felix125 - Do you understand why lots of women are afraid of the police? Have you really never seen anyone make a racist/sexist/homophobic joke?

I am wondering what you consider to be “crossing the line”.

Oh you have done a thorough survey of a large number of officers not just your hubby and his mates? I'm so sorry. Can you share it?

Flapjackquack

On my shifty and the surrounding shifts - no

Our Whatssapp group mainly talks about who is bringing the milk in for coffee

The talk on the shift is mainly around jobs & situations we have been too and asking advice for case files and how to deal with things etc etc

Questioning other organisations & senior management who take a lend of us

I'm sure it will exist - but I haven't seen it and neither has gold22

That’s interesting. My experience of listening to police offers has left me with the impression the police very much have an “us vs them” mentality. The them being the general public.

Things like hearing police officers moaning that they have to visit houses for domestic issues (showing woeful knowledge of domestic abuse) or casually talking about how black people do just commit more crime. When you call them out on unbiased prejudices they will be aghast and say they aren’t racist, it’s just their experience and civilians wouldn’t understand.

I’ve listened horrified whilst they have regaled stories of slamming people on car bonnets who’ve been rude to them, or telling people to behave or they’d arrest them. These are people I thought were decent human beings but give them some power and woah. None of them would consider they’d crossed a line. They told these stories as everyday anecdotes, fully believing their actions are justified and any objections were met with you wouldn’t understand.

I’ve also been to police community days and seen bullying behaviour. When mentioned it’s just waved away with oh that’s Dave he’s just a knob etc. I have seen amazing behaviour from police officers, I’ve even contacted police forces to praise actions of officers but I am under no illusions that there is a very problematic culture at play.

I’m also very surprised that in 22 years you’ve only ever seen exemplary behaviour from your colleagues. How extraordinary.

Why do you need to be so sarcastic? It adds nothing to your assumptions and makes you look foolish. I haven’t said anything about a husband or his mates on this thread, so why do you keep raising it?

Yep I'm agreeing.

I would also just say, I'm reading the posts about needing majority women police officers- we need to remember that there is more to crime than corrupt male officers committing offences against women.

These are the crimes which are in the papers but if you saw the jobs were called to regularly, numerous times a day, every shift male cops are absolutely needed at them- with the best training and will in the world, who is going to overpower a large male with a knife quicker and safer for everyone, who is going to catch up quicker to the DV offender who's bolted out of his back door after absolutely battering his girlfriend for the tenth time. This is not me saying female cops are inadequate but I'm sure you can appreciate (as a whole, not every individual case) males are faster/stronger. No matter how fast I run after an offender, my male colleagues are outrunning me a majority of the time.

Yeah the problem with the female majority police force will be that the men would then be like a TSG unit

I said I suspected you hadn't done done a thorough survey and you said I suspected wrongly. So have you done it or not? And if so can you share it? Otherwise I can't give any credence to your opinions about the police. Now you're suggesting you don't know any police officers intimately. Sorry, I assumed you did because I couldn't see any other reason for desperately wanting to defend a group of people unless you are involved with them. Is it that you're a police officer? It's not me that's being foolish or even sarcastic. I'm just asking you to explain why I should believe you. That's what the police say when trying to help us from being taken in: don't believe people are who they say they are. Always ask for ID. I think that is very good advice.

There has just been a suicide of a Chief Inspector in the Met who was a paedophile. He was not reported.

He too had clearance. He was reported initially for obscene WhatsApp, but when his house was searched, he had thousands indecent images, and sex toys kept in under a trap door.

Who signs that man off? Who vetted him? Someone who sends obscene or sexual messages without asking gives a clue to their character.

Vetting needs to look at that. If you are the kind of guy that needs to send porn on your phone you have no place in the police. A generation ago when porn had to be sought and bought in Soho you would have lost your job as an officer. End of.

I’d trust a police officer long before a member of the public.
Statistically, your at least 10x more likely to be assaulted, raped or murdered by a male member of the public than a male police officer.
And are 3x more likely to be assaulted, raped or murdered by a male family member than a male member of the public.

So according to statistics and probability, we should be 30x more afraid of the man sleeping under our roof than a male police officer. 🤷‍♀️

The police do actually vet recruits and regularly reinvestigate officers. It’s not perfect, always a few bad apples will slip through the net. But it’s really only people who cannot do the maths of probability or assess risk that are panicking and on a campaign to smear the police into some sort of club for villains.

@Onnabugeisha - would you mind quoting the source of those statistics please.

Unfortunately the bad apples are;

The worst sex offender in the UK of the 21st century

A paedophile with thousands of top category images,

A sadistic sexually motivated killer

These are people who used their status to evade scrutiny. Whereas, their status should have meant very much more scrutiny.

Theyre basically taking the rate of offending within the general population from the ONS and then comparing that rate to the rate of offending amongst male police officers. Then comparing both to the rates of intimate partner violence. I did it when the Everard murder happened.

But where are you getting the rate of offending amongst male police officers from?

I understand there are a lot of issues already raised with older officers from the ilk of stick together, us against them type. The type who get away with things for years and it’s actually quite horrifying. I saw recently an officer who was behaving outside of the expected standards which was found out (nothing as heinous as this) and then not long after, there was a social media post glorifying them and their work.

From my experiences, standards are dramatically slipping both in staff already in and the standard to join a force. What was once a difficult process is now more, we’ll accept nearly anyone, as they’re being pushed to recruit to make it look like they’re hiring many more new officers, when it’s just replacing what was cut before.

It was a report on the Met police. I wish now I’d saved all links and figures, but I didn’t.

Forgive me if I don’t quite trust a Met Police report about the rate of offending from their officers given the past few years…

FFS. It was a report ON the Met police not a report BY the Met police.

Does it matter? They covered up Couzens and Carrick didn’t they? They covered up Charing Cross. Would they have been included in any statistics? Today a news report about the IOPC watering down a report on Met Police conduct.

Here’s a report about how domestic abuse claims against police officers are not handled correctly:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-super-complaints-force-response-to-police-perpetrated-domestic-abuse/police-perpetrated-domestic-abuse-report-on-the-centre-for-womens-justice-super-complaint

On the subject of cover ups, do you really think that only applies to police? Or that only police are capable of cover ups? I fail to see how this is a defining factor. All criminals cover up their crimes for as long as possible. Some are able to get away with it longer than others.

But there’s no reason to argue, if you think being terrified of the police is for you, crack right on.

The police need to be held to a higher standard than other organisations because they're the ones who police the others. They should not only be squeaky clean, but also seen to be squeaky clean. If people don't trust the police, then they can't do their job. Simples.