The London-based Metropolitan Police force has a problem on its hands. After the discovery that a serving member of the force raped and murdered Sarah Everard in March 2021, there was understandable shock and fear among women. The Met Police quickly issued advice which did nothing to calm the waters, suggesting that women:
- shout out to a passerby, flag down a bus or knock on someone’s door if they were fearful of any police officer trying to detain them
- demand to see the officer’s ID
- have the officer in question phone his station for verification of his standing
Given that the officer who killed Sarah was not an imposter and had shown her a warrant and that passersby didn’t intervene because they thought it was a legit detention, it was clear the Met didn’t get it. Women fear lone police officers even when those officers appear to be going by the book. Sarah could have asked for ID and would have been shown one that passed the sniff test. It wouldn’t have made any difference. Furthermore, asking for ID or verification doesn’t tend to go down well with officers who are already hostile to anyone trying to assert their civil rights.
The public spotlight then turned to the shocking number of policemen found to have sexually abused women in recent years, and even worse, to the lack of real consequences for their offences. According to a Freedom of Information data requested by several journalists, half of the Met Police officers found guilty of sexual misconduct in the past eleven years kept their jobs. As more examples of sexism and misogyny have come to light, the Met continues to miss the point, prompting the National Chair of the Police Federation, John Apter, to pen an opinion piece on the matter recently. It’s not even a particularly accusatory piece; more of a call to action –a “Come on, Lads, if we don’t step up, we’re part of the problem” approach. But boy did it prove a point — there’s a problem in the Met Police, and it’s not just the ones who rape and murder women.
But don’t take my word for it on why it ‘s happening; here’s educator and author Jackson Katz explaining the dynamic:
(I recommend the whole article to any guy reading this; it’s a great discussion about men stepping up.)
And guys — if you still don’t believe you may be contributing to the problem, how about your silence? According to these authors discussing a similar issue in the US Marines, you are “everyday guys in the trenches who are missing in action when it comes to having the moral courage to stand up to such behavior.” They continue,
In other words, if you don’t acknowledge sexism and do something to stop it, you’re not an ally of women, you’re allowing the problem to thrive.
On social media, I saw some predictable knee-jerk responses from accounts supposedly belonging to serving police officers, about John Apter’s piece. (Mostly anonymous, so who knows?)
- Asking Apter why he hadn’t worked as hard on police pensions
- Accusing him of ‘virtue-signalling, ‘self-flagellation’, or ‘virtuous point-scoring’
- Telling him it wasn’t a policing issue, but a ‘societal’ issue
- Blaming a ‘conspiracy’
- Stating that his points were ‘othering’ officers and leading to a ‘siege’ mentality
- Asserting that his words were ‘unnecessary’
- Insisting that it was ‘institutional’ misogyny as opposed to ‘real’ misogyny
- Outright denial because the commenter hadn’t seen it personally
- Many were deeply ‘disappointed’
- And of course, #NotAllMen
Several claimed to care about the issues while dismissing them in this way, but surely if you really cared, you’d at least open with empathy; “Oh my god, this is terrible” and not “How dare you accuse everyone…”? As the authors above said, you can’t be an ally if you don’t actively support us.
Again, women know it’s #NotAllMen but when you’re a man in a police uniform, backed up by other men in uniform, how can we have confidence in the force as an entity? And when you converge like this to dismiss our claims, you pile on by demonstrating a lack of interest in improving things.
Of course it’s ‘disappointing’ that women don’t feel they can trust police officers. I’d be disappointed if some of my colleagues acted in a way that brought my whole profession into disrepute. Here’s the thing, though — repeatedly mentioning my disappointment when people like Apter highlight the legitimate concerns of others would suggest I wanted my disappointment to be given priority. While it’s a legitimate matter, redirecting the discussion to police officers’ feelings sends a strong message to women that we are of secondary concern.
Why is it important to keep banging on about this?
Because, Met Police, you still have a problem both institutionally, as Apter said, and with your messaging. Continuing to disregard women, either by doling out advice without our input or by your officers’ attempts to minimise and dismiss our concerns, is achieving nothing.
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This post was previously published on Equality Includes You.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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