Julie Bindel
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Why should male police officers be different from other men who assault women, especially when some can use their police officer status to mask their crimes and instil further fear and vulnerability in women? It’s a perfect cover for the people who are supposed to protect us.
Inherent misogyny within police culture creates a context in which men like Couzens can operate in plain sight. Couzens’ colleagues jokingly named him as ‘The Rapist’, and they failed to arrest him following allegations of him flashing his penis at women. Reports from female colleagues that Couzens made them feel uncomfortable were not acted upon.
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan recently stated there was an ‘epidemic’ of violence against women and girls. However, in August, feminist campaigner Joan Smith left her role as special advisor on London’s violence against women and girls board after raising concerns about transgender women using rape and domestic abuse refuges. Khan has so far failed to properly engage with women asking him why she was let go.
Khan isn’t alone in not facing up to the seriousness of this issue. When shadow lord chancellor David Lammy claimed – while discussing trans rights – that some ‘dinosaurs’ are ‘hoarding’ rights, it was clear he did not understand why single sex services, and spaces such as domestic violence refugees, hospital wards and rape crisis centres exist. Men like Lammy really don’t get how our rights are curtailed on a daily basis, because of the fear and reality of male violence. Not being able to trust the police to protect women from violent men is terrible. Knowing that some police officers are themselves domestic abusers and sexual predators is outrageous.
Senior police officers and politicians can no longer get away with throwing around the phrase ‘one bad apple’ about police officers who violate women. Nor can they play the trick of distancing themselves from men like Couzens.
Former DCI Simon Harding, a senior investigator on Sarah Everard’s case, says police officers ‘do not view’ Couzens as a police officer. Harding said Couzens ‘should never have been near a uniform’.
But why was he still a serving officer after three allegations of indecent exposure were made against him to two police forces and not investigated? Who left him free to murder Sarah Everard because he was ‘one of them’?
The ‘one bad apple’ excuse is as lame as it is offensive. Unless there are serious, sustained efforts to rid the police service of institutionalised misogyny, women can never be safe.
Because you read about met police
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