A woman is killed every three days in the UK. MP Jess Phillips reads their names out every year on International Women’s Day, but many don’t even get a headline let alone the cover of a newspaper. This week the very first Strategic Policing Requirement (STRA) came out for the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC). Nothing in the report is a surprise and the only reason it even happened was the national outrage to Wayne Couzens crimes and the absolute dire state of women’s safety that was exposed as a result of that case.
It is important to recognise that the National Police Chiefs Council’s STRA specifically does not acknowledge or recognise police perpetrated crimes against women and girls. Handy that. There is one paragraph about why women don’t report which does not mention the proliferation of misogyny and abuse perpetrated by policemen throughout the country and nothing on why the STRA even actually exists.
From the STRA: In a six month time frame half a million crimes that are considered violence against women and girls were recorded and that doesn’t take in to account that the majority of crimes against women are not reported (the fact that there is underreporting is mentioned in the report). Unsurprisingly there are increases in domestic abuse, a sharp increase in sexual offences, and stalking, harassment and modern slavery and human trafficking.
Usually when I sit down to angrily bang out a thousand words about police treatment of women, it is very specifically tied to a news story that I am outraged about. But over the last few months, a deeper sense of unease has settled in my stomach. Maybe it was the year of waiting for the Casey Review which should have been cataclysmic for the Met. But now, still under special measures, having denied the institutional findings from Baroness Casey, it seems like the police are back to acting with impunity and arrogance.
It seems like Mark Rowley et al have gotten past the hurdles of the Casey Review and the Coronation and are still standing despite arresting women safety volunteers the night before the Coronation. They seem to be gaining confidence in still having their jobs and back to giving women’s issues lip service but not actually doing anything to actually improve our safety or increase women’s trust. (Hint: it isn’t arresting women assisting vulnerable women as Night Stars).
When the report came out last week, I attended yet another task force meeting for the NPCC. And spent the rest of the day bereft. There is cursory work being done by a small team that may mean well, but it is a Sisyphean task when in actuality the institutions have no interest or intention of keeping us alive and safe. It is lip service and nothing more. This week it was implied that a few behavioural science workshops would clear up the pesky amounts of misogyny on the police force. Literally, it was one slide. Barely even a plaster.
I have come to the conclusion that our lives as women are not a priority. Women’s safety is not a priority and it is because we are fundamentally seen as collateral damage. We are property to be managed and protected in so far as it would be insulting and property damage if we were hurt or killed on their watch, much like it is offensive if their homes are burgled or cars are defaced.
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