Safety has always been a fear for most women, whether it’s a quiet burning thought lingering in the back of the brain, or a constant worry. Right now, most of the women in the country seem to be experiencing the latter. In the wake of the murders of Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa and sisters Nicole Smallman And Bibaa Henry - to name but a few - women are scared.
Scared to listen to music while wearing headphones. Scared to wear clothes that could be seen as ‘provocative’ or ‘asking for it. Scared to walk around at night without pushing a key through the gaps between their knuckles. And now, scared of the police too.
According to a newly released YouGov poll, conducted on behalf of the End Violence Against Women coalition, half of women in the UK have lost trust in the police. The survey showed 47% of women said trust in the police has decreased since the details of Wayne Couzens’ crimes and other high-profile examples of police forces’ misogynistic cultures emerged. Additionally, 40% of men said they also lost trust in the police following these crimes.
These statistics are, unfortunately, unsurprising. In the last year, women have watched members of the police murder a woman while performing a fake arrest, storm the vigil held for the same woman, causing more violence towards women, ignore the fact this murderer was even a police officer, andtell them to ‘wave down a bus’if anything similar happens to them. The police response to this terrifying time would be laughable, if we weren’t busy being scared for our lives.
The police response to this terrifying time would be laughable, if we weren’t busy being scared for our lives.
In the year to March 2020, 207 women were killed in England, Scotland and Wales. Almost one in three women aged 16-59 will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime, and two women are killed by a current or former partner per week. Meanwhile, approximately 85,000 women experience rape or sexual assault per year in England and Wales, but the rape conviction rate is a drastic 2%. The statistics pinpoint that the system is not working for women, that this is a systemic problem proving a solution can only be found if we rewrite the rules. Something has to change.
Women hope that police will catch and apprehend rapists and killers in the most complicated of cases. After all, that is their job. But the Met failed to notice the fact that they had a killer - Couzens - in their own ranks, and haven’t taken accountability for this oversight in the way we’d have liked, so how can women be expected to trust them now?
Since Couzens was charged, former officers have revealed there could also be a culture problem amongst the police force that creates an environment where crimes like these can easily happen. On BBC Radio 4’s World at One, former Metropolitan Police Chief Parm Sandhu said that female officers don’t always report suspicious behaviour of male colleagues because they ‘close ranks’. It seems even some female police officers are part of the 47% of women that don’t trust the police.
A former Metropolitan Police chief said that female officers don’t always report suspicious behaviour of male colleagues because they ‘close ranks’
This news, unfortunately, comes as rape reports reach an all-time high and the reverberations of the Coronavirus pandemic still affect how crimes against women are handled. This is a time where trust in the police is paramount, but it’s clear that the Met police - along with other forces - have failed to maintain it.
Hopefully, recording statistics like these on women’s trust - or lack thereof - in the police will inspire positive change, but this will require serious commitment and prioritisation from the government. So far, they have reopened the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) consultation and launched a public health campaign focusing on perpetrator behaviour following Sarah Everard's murder, where they vowed to look into male violence in the United Kingdom more closely. More campaigns like these, along with enquiries into how the police system actually works, must be actioned.
The results of this survey show us that this is a matter of urgency. For women to be safe, we must have confidence in the people who are supposed to protect us.
READ MORE: Why Do The Police Keep Pretending Wayne Couzens Wasn’t Actually A Police Officer?