Enjoy beating up women? Become a policeman!

[Clymene]

An FOI request by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that most forces simply don't investigate allegations of domestic violence against serving officers:

'there had been nearly 700 reports of domestic abuse by police officers in the three years to 2018 – averaging more than four a week. Less than one in ten reports resulted in a dismissal or warning. Only 3.9% of reports resulted in a conviction, compared with 6.2% among the general public.'

The police are deeply institutionally misogynist.

Full article (warning, contains graphic details of physical and emotional abuse): www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2021-06-15/years-of-living-in-fear-police-still-failing-partners-of-violent-officers

What is it that causes so many people (here, women) to rush to the defence of predatory and dangerous men when they use the cover of their membership of a 'good' group

I don't think I've ever seen such shameful minimising on an MN thread. This isn't anecdotal opinions, it's actual statistics. As for "I don't like the way the thread title was phrased, so 'sadly' I can't possibly take any notice of the valid concerns in the thread"... absolutely pathetic.

Not to mention the either disingenuous or plain thick-witted tactic of minimising the facts by pretending that anyone is saying policemen 'are all wifebeaters'.

Very informative post by Resilience though. Sorry to hear you were a victim yourself. Very brave of you to use that as a motivation to help others.

"it's not helpful"
"sadly"
"overly dramatic"
"Balanced, rational thought is in short supply these days."
"just like anywhere else you'll always get bad eggs"

"it's not right for you, and others, to insinuate that if someone is a police officer then they can be as abusive as they want and nothing will happen to them”
‘. It's time for you to grow up “
‘stop spreading hatred on MN towards a largely innocent group"

@Clymene

Asaph I see the Not My Nigel crew are out in force this morning

The gentle giant that is my DP was a PC then PS for a decade and you know why he did it… ? To make it safer for us to walk around, he doesn’t even kill spiders when I ask him to get rid.

I’m not saying that there are no DV cases within the sector, just that you can’t dislike people’s experiences that go against what you want to hear.

People are not saying that all individual police are abusers.

The point isn't about the examples of gentle giants etc it's about the culture and overall framework that attracts and shelters abusers.

I don't think that is difficult to understand. The thread is being derailed by individual examples rather than looking at the overall problem.

I would be interested in knowing what the 'good eggs' thoughts are on how any culture of abuse/ cover up and failure to prosecute could be tackled?

Can the NAMALT not have their own forum somewhere? It's tiresome having discussions clogged up with people repeatedly stating the blindingly obvious in contradiction of something nobody ever said in the first place!

Individually all they can do is report to PSD AC12 and assist with any investigations that ensue. Him personally reported 3 people over his time there to them and two out of the three actually had to face up to what they’d done (none DV or abuse I might add but I don’t doubt if he had been made aware of it he would have) but one could see what was going to happen claimed ill health and was off on the sick for 9 months then retired through ill health. It was extremely frustrating for DP at the time by of course it’s out of their hands.

Sometimes it’s also out of PSDs hands too, they have guidelines. They do seem like a very busy department.

Why on earth do you think I'm talking about your husband @FTEngineerM?

I'll repeat part of my last post:

"Nothing changes if people don't accept there is an issue. That is the first step to making a change. What has saddened me about this thread is that the knee jerk reaction from many posters is literally just that - a refusal to acknowledge that there is a problem. It's interesting that so many people leaped straight from assuming that acknowledgment means accepting responsibility. It's like dealing with an online company who has fucked up your order - often, it's not that you want them to be personally responsible, you just want them to say sorry that this has happened.

I don't want individual police men (and I'll call them policemen, thanks, because women aren't the abusers) to take responsibility, I want them to acknowledge there's an issue and explain what their force is doing to tackle it."

All 'not my nigel' does is silence women. It is part of the conspiracy of silence around DV perpetrated by serving officers. Your attitude is literally part of the problem.

I didn’t say there was t a problem 😬 I literally said that.

Just you having a mild rage on about the people that had experiences that differed on the first page.

People having a different experience doesn’t negate the issue.

But what is the point of posting your "different experience"? It isn't relevant. What is being discussed is the people who do abuse and why they seem to get away with it more than the general population. Knowing that your bloke isn't an abuser doesn't help with that or move the discussion on, so why mention it at all?

Those statistics are awful but I can absolutely believe them.

My abuser, a man who in his youth had no issue walking on knifes edge, who only revealed his abuse to me in my pregnancy and postnatally, strongly considered a career in the police.

The worrying thing is my abuser was quite an unfit man and still had strength to overcome me.

Police have to pass fitness training, meaning they're probably considerably stronger than your average Joe as well.

People having a different experience doesn’t negate the issue.

No, but having experience of a policeman who isn't a perpetrator of domestic violence is totally irrelevant unless anyone was claiming that all policemen are perpetrators of domestic violence. Which they weren't. A sample size of one or two men is meaningless. And therefore turning up and saying "Well my husband's nice" on a thread citing data about a worrying number of cases of domestic violence by policemen cannot possibly be helpful or enlightening, and gives the impression of wanting to minimise the problem.

"it's not helpful"
"sadly"
"overly dramatic"
"Balanced, rational thought is in short supply these days."
"just like anywhere else you'll always get bad eggs"

"it's not right for you, and others, to insinuate that if someone is a police officer then they can be as abusive as they want and nothing will happen to them”
‘. It's time for you to grow up “
‘stop spreading hatred on MN towards a largely innocent group"
"Just you having a mild rage"

@lazylinguist

People having a different experience doesn’t negate the issue.

No, but having experience of a policeman who isn't a perpetrator of domestic violence is totally irrelevant unless anyone was claiming that all policemen are perpetrators of domestic violence. Which they weren't. A sample size of one or two men is meaningless. And therefore turning up and saying "Well my husband's nice" on a thread citing data about a worrying number of cases of domestic violence by policemen cannot possibly be helpful or enlightening, and gives the impression of wanting to minimise the problem.

Totally agree with this - that's the word I used upthread: minimise. I suspect there's a strong element of denial here too amongst all those married to / partnered with Nigel - not wanting to think about the fact that your husband or partner is potentially working with abusers.

"The gentle giant that is my DP was a PC then PS for a decade and you know why he did it… ? To make it safer for us to walk around, he doesn’t even kill spiders when I ask him to get rid."

I think what you're describing is your own loving sexual relationship. A big part of that is obviously you celebrating your husband being big and strong yet not violent. You obviously also love the feeling that he protects you and others. And that's all good but can you see why it isn't relevant? Because no matter how big those muscles of his and despite him having filed 3 complaints against fellow officers, "one could see what was going to happen" (as you say).

So victims of abusive policeman can also "see what was going to happen" (mine has retired too, funny that) and it does happen and that's a big problem which is not in the least alleviated by your husband being considerate towards spiders.

The stats look odd to me. Not sure you can legitimately compare a convictions arising from 700 tracked reports over 3 years to more than 3 million reports over the same periof that aren't tracked. The margin for error would be too big.

This doesn't surprise me unfortunately, I've not had many positive experiences with the police, and those I know personally, whilst I certainly wouldn't say they abuse their wives because I have no knowledge or evidence of this, they are very aggressive characters and are often the ones causing problems on nights out, or on the football pitch etc.. I've heard some horrible stories from them and now I have disassociated. I don't trust the police at all, and I certainly wouldn't call them if I even needed help.

To add, questioning the stats doesn't mean I don't believe it's happening. It would be astonishing if police were better at getting their own convicted. But I don't think the comparison is statistically sound.

@Clymene

Have you done a similar analysis of domestic abuse allegations against doctors, teachers, retail managers, sports people etc...? Point being, you have NO IDEA if the police have a disproportionately larger number of men prone to domestic violence than any other profession, ethnicity, sexuality or nationality.... Without a comparison, this data is completely meaningless - if it turns out bankers are more likely to beat their wives and get away with it, and police men are least likely - what would you think then?

Data can be selected and analysed to prove any hypothesis - which is why articles like this serve no purpose at all. And it's daft to use something so tenuous. In fact, wouldn't common sense dictate that a profession subject to FOI requests and in the public eye might have fewer abusers than professions with a lot of power but no public scrutiny - like surgeons or private miltary contractors.. Again unsubstantiated, but since we are throwing out random hypotheses, I'm sure there's a study somewhere that concluded this.

What would be far more interesting to see is stats provided by Womens Aid, Refuge etc documenting what the professions are of all the domestic abusers reported to them by the victims. Tbh that's the only statistic that would be unbiased because it will include women who do not report to the police or any other authority.

Have you done a similar analysis of domestic abuse allegations against doctors, teachers, retail managers, sports people etc...? Point being, you have NO IDEA if the police have a disproportionately larger number of men prone to domestic violence than any other profession, ethnicity, sexuality or nationality.

While I agree with your statement re. stats, the issue is the police should have a higher level of accountability. They are responsible for upholding the law, and part of that job is not breaking the laws you are supposed to uphold.

The force I work with is extremely proactive on this. Breaking Covid rules or even guidance for example was treated very seriously.

Is sounds like other forces don’t have the same standards. I am hoping that is changing and the stats in 3 years time will reflect the changes.

@todaysdilemma You are correct. The data is also meaningless because the prosecution rate figure for the general population cannot be calculated to any useful degree of accuracy without tracking a large number of cases from allegation to conviction and nobody does that. The margin of error is so big it swallows up the rate 3% rate difference shown.

*conviction rate figure, sorry

@Reallyreallyborednow I saw the FOI stats on in the article and over 3 years most forces had single digit reports. That seems incredibly low to me as I'm sure the towns in which those forces are based have had more domestic abuse reports than just those reported for the police.. Which means the police in those places are not more likely than others to abuse and get away with it.

Only the Met had 246 cases - by far the largest, and unfortunately we don't know how many of those were arrested or charged or convicted. For all we know, they could have a higher rate of this than other Forces. As you say, each force is very different - and aggregating all the data up like this doesn't draw any meaningful conclusions. It would be far more interesting to see BY FORCE - the number of accusations and arrests/charges. Not necessarily conviction, as at the end of day that is down to the CPS and not the Police.

I'm not denying that the Police likely do have plenty of cases of domestic abuse but I am not sure it is fair to say that they have more than any other profession. But if this is split by Force, it can mean more targetted actions against those individual forces than a generic tarnishing of the entire profession.

It's different when your abuser is a policeman because he can write you letters saying things like "that's a very serious allegation would you like to tell my employers or shall I". (am quoting from own experience)

So there is a large menu of weaponry available to a policeman that isn't available to retail managers.