Lots of opinions here, let me chuck mine in!
I was in the job. I did a fair old stint (a good 12-13 years). For the most part it's crap. No employee rights, bad hours, poor pay, being a whipping boy for the public, the media, your own senior officers. Much like a referee, there are no good decisions for every person who approves of one you make, another hates you for it.
As for the misogyny etc it's obviously there. Can't say I saw too much of it - this speaks to my next point.
The real issue in the plod is apathy. I was smart enough to keep my friends, hobbies and life outside the job going. That kept me sane - but other than my immediate teammates in any unit I was on I knew little of the other officers. I would say hello and make small talk, but a lot of them weren't my sort of people. I can see how the issues raised took root - a lot of proto-wannabe-alpha male attitudes coupled with a them and us attitude borne of the whipping boy status. The police attracts a lot of unsuitable people - the training and selection is nowhere near rigorous enough to root them out. When the law changed to make almost anything arrestable as long as you could prove necessity, what brain was used shut down. Common assault suitable for reporting at best? Bring them in and hand it over. Affray in street 20 minutes ago (used to be found commiting type offence) with no allegations or injuries by the time you turn up? Fuck it nick them all. Discretion went out the window.
I was totally apathetic by the end. I would book off weekends as much as possible, late shifts. I was a DC by that point who could not get any time to do any detecting as the pressure was on to race from scene to scene.
All in, glad I left. I earn three times what I used to, I work 9-5 mon-fri half WFH and am much happier.
It's just a job. Do you know the attitudes of all your coworkers? People being sexist, yeah the dumb ones will speak in public but the real nasty ones will have their inner circle and that's it.
TLDR - the issues are blatant, from experience it's a shit job with not great pay but provides a modicum of perceived power - we are shocked to find it attracts the wrong sort of people!
The poster who commented about rape victims having their phone and medical records scrutinised - you can thank the CPS and defence firms for that one. Most rapes, subjects have been either known or have spent some time in each others company beforehand (be it friends or met in a club or spoken over OLd or whatever) the case hinges on the argument over consent. A defence wants to introduce the slightest hint of reasonable doubt on the victims testimony that it was non consensual. They claim that the victim lives a lavcious life,vthat maybe they have a medical condition making them prone to memory lapse or whatever. They lean on the CPS, state that not all evidence has been properly examined and chuck out the case. The CPS for their part (who make the decision to charge or not in the first place) won't run a case unless it's a slam dunk so they wanna know if there are places a defence could attack so tell the police to check victims phone etc. It's a shit situation but for that (and that only) I will defend the plod a little and say that if you want rape convictions to change you need a root and stem change in the criminal justice system.
Right, that was all very cathartic. Back to staring at word docs and watching YouTube.
As you were.