Women endangered by police for coronation

[bd67thSaysReinstateLangCleg]

Buried in the middle of Grauniad article about the Republic arrests, the police arrested workers issuing rape alarms as part of a project called "Night Stars". Night Stars is run by Westminster Council with Home Office funding to help keep safe the women who work at night in places like Soho.

Adam Hug, the Labour leader of Westminster city council, said he was “urgently pushing the police for proper answers” after three council volunteers were arrested at about 2am on Saturday in Soho and later released on bail after they were found in possession of rape alarms. Police said “military colleagues” had believed such devices could be used to disrupt parading horses, posing “significant risk to the safety of the public and the riders”.

The council, however, said the devices were for the Night Stars volunteers to give out to vulnerable women and they were funded by a Home Office grant.

Can we talk about how women's safety has been undermined by the same Metropolitan Police force that employed the rapist-murderer of Sarah Everard (no, I will not write his name) so that a rich powerful man can have a crown put on his head?

Have you seen a woman after she has been sexually assaulted, raped or beaten?

Common sense wasn’t used here. These people were doing valuable work and the police didn’t bother to check before they arrested them. There’s no justification for it. There were numerous options available to them, they chose the wrong one. They don’t care about vulnerable women though, there’s plenty of evidence to show that.

A starting pistol was fired when the late queen was on her horse and her horse was spooked. It could easily have thrown her.

So you are saying you know better. When you can’t. You have no idea it is a “false excuse” or “bullshit”.

During the miners strike I saw police on horseback charge at peaceful picket lines. During the strike, in Nottingham, I saw mounted police charge crowds of families holding a picnic in a park. I was at Orgreave. I was at Grunwick.

@AP5Diva Have you seen the carnage the police can do? I very much doubt it.

I am not "anti" police, and in fact work very closely with some fantastic officers, male and female, actually on the agenda of violence against women and girls. But large institutions have good and bad in them. And para-military organisations of any type are prone to attracting and reinforcing people with mindsets that are counter to the purpose of the institution. The Met have shown to have, and have been independently assessed as having, allowed excessive user of force, excessive user of their powers, and as being racist and misogynistic. Not all of them. Some will be fine officers. But there is a long way to go until the police are trusted by people. If you don't understand why, then you haven't been listening.

Whatever the rights or wrongs, I don't know why you're blaming it disparagingly on KC.

I’ve been that woman.
How did you know the police “didn’t bother to check”? If these volunteers had proof of who they were and their role, I doubt they’d have been arrested. That doesn’t make this a police state, as we expect gas engineers to have ID before they touch our gas meters or come into our homes to do a gas safety check. It’s common sense to issue anyone working for you either as a paid employee or unpaid volunteer some sort of ID card.

And my other question is was anyone actually endangered by this? Because you can’t really say that was the case unless a rape happened that would have been prevented if the arrests had not occurred.

Who would know? All the female prostituted women I know don't report. They might actually tell the workers who were arrested. They certainly aren't telling the police. For some reason...

Are you actually trying to pretend that entering a stranger's home is in any way comparable to existing in a public place?

So much this.

I do not understand why you are downplaying the damage out of control horses can do since youve seen the lesser but still horrifying damage in control horses can do. How can you support saying the police should have just allowed rape alarms to be handed out to anyone along the Coronation route?

No. Perhaps you need to have a second read of my post to understand it.

The police could have asked the Night Star volunteers not to distribute rape alarms on the night before the coronation. The scheme is supported by the police, as well as Westminster Council. If the volunteers had, say, refused to stop distributing alarms, the police could have confiscated them.

This same rape alarm threat was then used to justify the arrest of Republic staff, who I strongly doubt were carrying rape alarms at 10am on busy streets in central London. And whose protest had already been agreed with the police.

I can totally get the police being extra vigilant given the extremely high risk circumstances (the Queen's funeral being marginally worse from that perspective but not by a lot). But in both of these examples, they could have worked proactively with the individuals involved, none of whom appeared out of nowhere, and none of whom had any interest in causing harm to other people. Instead they have made matters worse with their heavy-handed approach and justifications which I think very few people believe. And the people they've made matters worse for in particular are the members of the Met who do the day-to-day policing.

Sorry? Did you just called rape victims ‘female prostituted women’?

https://www.westminster.gov.uk/night-safety/night-stars

The Met knew who Night Stars are:

Night Stars is part of our Night Safety campaign.

Working in partnership with the Metropolitan Police and supported by Capital Arches Group

And the staff wear clearly-identifiable clothing:

The Night Stars are recognizable at night due to their distinctive pink reflective vests.

The accompanying picture shows a woman in a pink vest worn over a City of Westminster Council branded black jacket.

So "we didn't know who they were" just does not fucking fly here.

Now waiting for the next barrel-scraping excuse for how the police were somehow right.

Prostituted women are almost always the victim of at least one rape by a punter. Which they do not report to the police, for some reason...

Prostitution is rife in Soho and prostituted women will have been part of the demographic served by Night Stars.

Fuck me, I SAW women and CHILDREN who were DELIBERATELY mowed down by your "in control" police horses. Whilst there is nothing at all to support the police position that rape alarms being handed to vulnerable women at 2am in the morning was a risk to anyone. Or are you suggesting that this was a huge conspiracy by sex workers and their liaison officers to disrupt the "historic event"? Are you not aware that in the unlikely event that someone intended to do something that was to create chaos, they'd hardly be doing it out in the open?

There is no evidence that the police had ANY "intelligence". It may come as a shock, but some police officers lie. I for one do not believe for one minute that there was any such intelligence. That was a handy and, frankly, pathetically weak excuse to explain heavy handed tactics after the event.

Soho wasn’t on the coronation route, it’s about a half an hour walk away. And the parade started late morning/post ceremony didn’t it? Presumably if you wanted to cause a crush by out of control horses during the coronation as a protest against the monarchy and knew a rape alarm would sort it then you wouldn’t be hanging out in soho in the early hours of the morning hoping somebody would happen to give you one? You’d get one off amazon or something and stand on the parade route surely…

And if the horses are that easily spooked then it’s a bit worrying that they decided to parade so many through central London with drums, trumpets, crowds cheering and whistling, planes flying overhead etc (or indeed have them outside football stadiums, festivals etc or other crowded spaces). Especially as it’s not as if you have to have horses and couldn’t just have cars/soldiers on foot etc.

I find it quite chilling how willing people are to support the MET despite the multiple stories making it quite clear what their officers think of women, minorities etc.

Same as I also find it chilling how many people are happy to support the arrest of peaceful protesters in case they disrupt an massively privileged man getting a new hat (he’s already King, the coronation is just window dressing).

It's dead simple. You have a legal right to exist on the street because it's a public place, subject to not rough sleeping or harassing people (begging is a form of harassment in my view). You don't have a right to enter someone else's home. It's therefore reasonable for a home owner to ask for ID before letting a meter reader in, because their property, their rules. It's not reasonable to demand ID from someone just because they are outdoors at 2am because that's public property.

Nothing to show there was a risk to women and children from out of control horses? No evidence at all? You’ve seen the damage horses can do when in control, it’s worse when out of control.

No, I don’t think there is any conspiracy, I think the police didn’t want their horses to bolt out of control into crowds due to rape alarms being set off so they challenged people who were handing out rape alarms along the Coronation route mere hours before it started. Then they arrested them presumably because the people either refused to stop, or could not prove they were council volunteers. And we have no idea of there were even any vulnerable women about who missed out on a rape alarm from 2am on that one night either.

I know people including police lie, but how would you know there is no evidence they were warned about protesters having rape alarms? You’re not privy to all the 101 calls and chats people use to tip off the police. The fact that the following day some protesters were arrested with rape alarms on their person indicates that it’s something that did happen, so not unrealistic to think perhaps the police were tipped off about it the night before.

I'd like to add that the fear of arrest will have a chilling effect on organisations and their staff who carry out this kind of night safety support work. This means fewer volunteers, some organisations may dissolve or stop doing night safety work, and this will disproportionately harm women, not just in Soho last Friday, but across the whole country in the future.

The fact that the following day some protesters were arrested with rape alarms on their person
Were they? I've not heard of anyone being arrested with a rape alarm on them except the Night Star volunteers.

But they weren’t just outdoors at 2am. They were out there working as council volunteers- a type of civil servant just like the police who were out there also working.

If you are doing a job on the streets at 2am (or anywhere) on behalf of the government you should have some form of ID to prove it.

Instead of me having to prove that women were raped last Friday, despite the Home Office considering it likely enough to fund the project, why don't you prove that one of the rape alarms that would have been handed out in Soho would definitely have been used to startle a horse?

Not to worry, we rarely have a Coronation.