Not holding my breath

[Thistledew]

for Stephen Lawrence style enquiry into the culture of misogyny within the police force.

This article from the Guardian records that "In the past four years, there were 56 cases involving police officers and a handful of community support officers who either were found to have abused their position to rape, sexually assault or harass women and young people or were investigated over such allegations".

Just part of life, innit?

This report from the Home Office says there are 154,930 police officers and community support officers. Assuming all the 56 incidents involved different people (no repeat offenders) that's 0.03% of all officers. Assuming that incidents are under-reported, and using the 10% reporting rate, that's still only 0.3%. Hardly a culture, imo.

It only took one case for the police to investigate the allegation of institutionalised racism.

Thanks for posting this Thistledew.

My BIL is in the police force and he finds the culture of racism and sexism to be one of the most negative aspects of his job.

It will be interesting to see what the results of this are;

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) are so concerned they are carrying out a rare joint inquiry into the scale of the problem, which will be published in September, the Guardian can reveal.

This is truly concerning;

Many of the cases documented involve police officers accessing the police national computer to gain access to the details of vulnerable women and young people in order to bombard them with texts and phone calls and initiate sexual contact.

I'm glad there seems to be evidence in the article that the issue is being treated seriously and it has been admitted that the scale of the problem is vastly under reported because women routinely aren't believed. That is positive.

I think that it's deeply disturbing, especially in light of the recent arrest of an officer in the Sapphire unit on suspicion of perverting the course of justice in regard to a number of rape cases. No matter how low the percentage, vulnerable women should be able to trust that the police will protect them not exploit or assault or rape them, and women within the force deserve a working culture whereby being raped by a colleague isn't joked about, loudly, in :

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/08/metropolitan-police-rape-victims-detective-arrested

www.policeoracle.com/news/Crime/2012/Jun/21/IPCC-To-Probe-Sex-Offence-Unit-Procedures_50180.html