Research Article: 2024 Vol: 27 Issue: 2
Emma Cunningham, University of East London,UK
Citation Information: Cunningham E., (2024). Three criminals in police uniform: Reflections on radical feminist insight to challenge misogyny in policing. Journal of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, 27(2), 1-13
Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) is a growing global phenomenon along with the restriction of women’s rights over their own bodies and their appearance, in countries as disparate as America and Iran. The United Nations illustrated global VAWG prevalence and how it had peaked during COVID-19 (UN, 2020). At the same time there has been a rise in explicitly and overtly misogynistic ideas from influencers of boys and men like Andrew Tate. Tate extols the financial benefits to boys and men to follow his success of exploiting women and deceiving them into believing they are in relationships to control and abuse them emotionally, sexually and financially (Das, 2022). Concurrently in the UK we have a justice gap in relation to the successful prosecution of domestic and sexual violent offenders, and the criminal justice system which continues to blame and fail women generally (Stern, 2010; Stanko, 2023), and especially migrant women survivors, who are all also negatively impacted by cuts in legal aid since 2012 (Siddique, 2023). In the UK we have also seen increases in misogynistic crime offences undertaken by predatory criminal police officers. These offence types have included police perpetrated domestic violence and police use of online platforms in WhattsApp groups to share racist, homophobic and misogynistic messages with groups of other police officers. Some officers have also shared crime scene photographs of murdered women via this platform (Cunningham, 2021). In response there has been a lack of concerted, substantial institutional acknowledgement of the term ‘institutionalised’ in relation to racism or misogyny in policing. Instead of a recognition and acknowledgement of these offenders, there has been a denial of this toxic culture from within policing, followed by the adherence to the suggestion that this is simply a problem of a few rotten apples, to explain away these individual criminals in uniform. One example of this can be seen in the comments from Cressida Dick, the first female Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), where she suggested the MPS had ‘an occasional bad ‘un’ (Topping, 2021). She also saw the term ‘institutional racism as an unhelpful (Cunningham, 2021) as has the new Commissioner, Rowley. Gavin Stephens, however, becomes most senior serving officer in 2024 to accept that discrimination in policing does in fact operate at a ‘fundamental level’ which may add pressure to Rowley this year to confront these issues and finally accept the terminology and the problem (Dodd, 2024a).
Other institutions also contain and reproduce toxic misogynistic and racist culture, and research has also pointed to the clash of cultures within Higher Education (McCarthy and Taylor, 2023), and policing culture has been brought into Higher Education with the professionalisation agenda. Notwithstanding the acceptance that toxic cultures also exist within other organisations, within policing this culture poses particular problems given officers’ state sanctioned powers, credibility and discretion over citizens. For victim / survivors of domestic or sexual violence this culture will inform how the police respond to the offences they have been subjected to (Stern, 2010), and the same is true in relation to Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic citizens. The Centre for Women’s Justice in the UK submitted a successful super complaint against the police in 2019 in a legal effort to hold policing to account for police perpetrated VAWG (CWJ, 2019), however the toxic culture
In the UK from 2021 onwards we have seen a pattern of male entitlement within policing and the toxic hypermasculine culture and racism which have concentrated on the procedural and practical failings of policing in various inspections (HMICFRS 2022; Casey 2023) and which culminated in corroboration in 2023 with Dame Casey’s review. One response to these offences is the suggestion that the whole vetting of police officers requires a complete overhaul to prevent inappropriate officers with unacceptable attitudes from entering, transferring between, and remaining within the police organisation. There has been a recent vetting of existing officers after the cases of Couzens and Carrick (Dodd, 2024b). Dodd explained that 307,000 police staff were vetted by cross-checking them against a national intelligence database and this exercise was overseen by the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) in England. The findings showed that there were ‘88 cases where discipline investigations were needed, and a further 139 where vetting needed to be reviewed, as well as the nine criminal cases. Police said another 128 required “management intervention”’ (Dodd, 2024b). More worryingly, Dodd (2024b) explained how these figures were lower than what were anticipated.
The traditional, male dominated institution of Policing may now include females across ranks and their advancement has been detailed (Laverick and Cunningham, 2023a; Laverick, Joyce and Cunningham, 2023b), however there has been a history and normalisation of denigrating female colleagues, blocking their opportunities and sexually harassing them over decades, often without a formal response and any organisational justice (Cunningham and Ramshaw 2020). At the moment there are still serving officers who have links with organised crime or who have been involved in sexual or domestic violence who are still working in policing in the UK as evidenced by Dodd (2024b).
The ‘othering’ of women using misogynistic terminology includes dehumanising and humiliating behaviours shown towards women generally, and also to women officers by male officers which has been seen in research which focussed on the lived-experiences of policewomen over four decades (Cunningham and Ramshaw, 2020). These behaviours are seen to continue with police officers sharing of images of the bodies of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman who were violently murdered in London (Cunningham, 2021; 52). Queensland offers similar examples of the othering of Black Nigerians using racist terms and also the denigration of indigenous women in relation to ‘blow jobs’ (Gillespie, 2023). These misogynistic acts are the outcomes of putting these views and beliefs into action, as seen in these individual examples. The particular culture within policing still remains male-dominated with beliefs about male superiority and the practice of undermining and undervaluing of policewomen (Cunningham and Ramshaw, 2020; Casey 2023), of women generally, and of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic women officers and citizens. The police policing themselves does not work, not in the UK or in Australia. Not accepting misogyny as a hate crime is a missed opportunity by successive political leaders in the UK. The poor decision-making about the heavy-handed policing of the vigil for Sarah Everard in London added to the feelings of injustice and increased fear of crime felt by many women. Feminist research has illustrated the threat posed by male violence in terms of domestic and sexual violence and harassment in private as well as public spaces from the 1980s onwards in the UK. The insight from activists and academics illustrated the widespread and structural nature of this violence within patriarchy, and reminded these violent acts maintained the control and subordination of all women (Hanmer and Saunders 1984; Stanko 1990).
In Australia, Prenzler and Maguire (2023) have detailed the history and context of Police failings with regard to issues of racism and misogyny, and cite the procedural and practical failings highlighted in the Richard’s Report ‘A Call for Change’ (2022). They explain that ‘The Inquiry found that complaints management was deficient in every aspect, particularly in terms of intrinsic bias, including extensive conflicts of interest between officers receiving complaints and officers conducting investigations and carrying out disciplinary interventions. There was entrenched cronyism, sexism and racism; persecution and harassment of complainants; substandard discipline; failure to address behavioural issues; an excessive burden on local commanders; opaque data; and lack of communication with complainants. The system ‘fail(ed) to meet community expectations of independence and transparency’, and also failed to generate the confidence of police employees (p. 324). Of particular note was the description of the Local Management Resolution system as ‘broken’ (p. 324)’ (Prenzler and Maguire, 2023).
This paper suggests a reflection on the feminist activists and academics insight into VAWG and police culture in relation to power and control will enhance discussions of police culture as well as attempts to challenge and change this. In Australia as in England and Wales, the issues of misogyny and racism have not been taken seriously, and in both cases criminal policemen in uniform have been enabled and have flourished within a toxic policing culture over a period of time.
This paper explores three cases of male predatory police officers who have recently been in the media spotlight given their violent crimes against women. The cases of Wayne Couzens and David Carrick from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in England and Wales and the case of Adrian Moore a Police Officer in Western Australia Police (WAP) provide the data for this exploration into toxic examples to have come to light in terms of this misogynistic violence against women by policemen. This study will explore these three cases of criminals who undertook their sexual offences in plain sight, and abused their police position, police equipment and police uniform. These cases will be examined via newspaper articles in the Guardian, the highest quality news media source and the second most popular online newspaper in the UK (Guardian 2020), and will employ a feminist analysis which recognises the patriarchal structures within society, and sees this reinforced and intensified within police culture. While this information about the cases is within the public domain, applying feminist theories and exploring the abuse of power and control are critical concepts used in this study in uniquely informing understanding of domestic and sexual violence offending. Only with a clear knowledge and acceptance of the power and control dynamics and misogyny can attempts be made to prevent and call out further abuses of this nature in the future in policing, in line with another necessary condition of feminist research, that of raising awareness and ultimately informing policy and practice.
Coyle and Sykes’ concept of hegemonic masculinity (Coyle and Sykes, 1998: 264 in Brown and Heidensohn, 2000: 42), can clearly still be seen within policing (Chan et al., 2010; Cordner and Cordner, 2011, Cunningham 2021). McCarthy and Taylor (2023) also usefully examine misogyny in terms of its use as a label and as a concept. They go on to suggest that rather than thinking of misogyny as individual actions by ‘bad apples’ they use Manne’s (2018) suggestion that misogyny is located within ‘ social systems and environments as a whole, in which women will tend to face hostility of various kinds because they are women in a man’s world (ie a patriarchy)’ (McCarthy and Taylor, 2023; 5). This has certainly been the case for policewomen who have been shown they are in a man’s world over decades within policing (Brown and Heidensohn, 2000; Steinþórsdóttir and Pétursdóttir, 2022).
Institutional injustice will also be of note within this paper, where policewomen were subjected to different forms of misogyny illustrated by individual degrading misogynistic acts, but which can also be seen in an organizational sense where superiors were able to undermine or belittle women in terms of their uniform over four decades in policing in England (Cunningham and Ramshaw, 2020), or by the sharing of images via WhattsApp of murdered women (Cunningham, 2023) as new technology is used by perpetrators in undertaking new forms of violence against women and girls. The three cases will be explored to expose any similarities and differences within and between them, and will consider whether there were lost opportunities to have acted and intervened in these cases, especially given recent calls in the UK for a complete overhaul of vetting systems to appoint officers. The cases illustrate entrenched and systematic misogyny, brutality and absolute subjugation of women with a total disregard for their humanity (See the discussion about misogyny in McCarthy and Taylor, 2023). Judge Deborah Richards’ report about Queensland Police Service (QPS) had found that sexism, racism and misogyny are a “significant problem” in the QPS in Australia, and provided 77 recommendations for changes (Silk 2022). Given there are many more officers still offending across forces and beyond national boarders, and with around 1,100 currently under investigation in England and Wales (Stanko, 2023), this is a particularly timely exploration of these high profile examples.
The first case summary is that of Wayne Couzens, a police officer in MPS, who had been seen to have been exposing himself to members of the public from 2015-2020, where he appeared to become more and more emboldened until he kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard on March 3, 2021 (Dodd and Sinmaz, 2023). Dodd and Sinmaz report that that there had been clear chances over a period of years when the police could have stopped Couzens. It appears his earlier offending had not been investigated or followed up, even when he could have been clearly identifiable via his car, which would have been a basic and straightforward policing task, and would have identified him as a serial sex offender and danger to women.
‘He exposed himself three times, with witnesses recording either full registration details of vehicles he used, or partial details. But police took no action, leaving Couzens to continue as a serving Metropolitan police officer entrusted with a gun’ (Dodd and Sinmaz, 2023). He had exposed himself at a fast food restaurant, and also to a cyclist and to a family while driving his car and these events had been reported with information given about his car. None of these events were adequately investigated over that period of time which alongside working in a toxic and misogynistic police culture, supported Couzens to believe he could continue his sexual offending uninterrupted. As in the case of Moore, who we will come to later, there were tight reporting restrictions during this case as there was in Western Australia in order to ensure these offenders got a fair trial. These failings of police investigation and action allowed Couzens to feel emboldened to continue his offending, which resulted in the rape and murder of Sarah Everard. Couzens used his status and police identification to stop Sarah Everard on the grounds of COVID-19 restrictions, and he was able to kidnap her from the street in London while she walked home. He used his police handcuffs and belt and raped and murdered her, disposed of her body and returned to his home and his family. These events illustrate the actions of an offender who presumably thought he would not be challenged and charged. He received a whole life sentence for his crime, however the conditions which had helped facilitate this terrible crime had allowed him to continue his serial offending, and as the spokesperson from Refuge reminded it ‘ showed further serious failings by the Metropolitan Police to protect women and girls’ (Dodd and Sinmaz, 2023).
The second case, David Carrick, another policeman in the MPS, saw many more complainants come forward after his initial arrest in Jan 2023, with charges of 85 rapes and sexual assaults over the course of two decades of offending (Dodd, 2023). Carrick’s case came after that of Couzens and this raised several questions as they were both in the firearms section of elite diplomatic protection units, and both offended against women over a period of years, Carrick over decades. They were apparently not connected, however issues about the culture of such units remained an issue of debate. Like Couzens, Carrick abused his position of power as a strong, male police officer with the powers that go alongside his role and believed he would not be challenged and prosecuted because of his position. He was also enabled by the police culture and like Couzens, questions about him as a person and his behaviours along with nicknames were shared within the team he worked in, but police culture and solidarity along with camaraderie and loyalty to the job meant that any questionable behaviour went unchallenged. Like Couzens, Carrick also remained an armed police officer. Carrick relied on this support from the police family, as well as knowing that women victim survivors would be fearful of making complaints and facing disbelief and re-victimization by the Criminal Justice process which blames women, and which has been seen to be influenced by rape myth acceptance (Stern, 2010). Importantly, he would have a knowledge and understanding of the way women are treated by the justice system given his policing experience, and ‘He relied on making his victims fear he was untouchable, exploiting his status as an armed officer, threatening some that they would never be believed if they complained. He told one: “I am the law.”’(Dodd, 2023). He pleaded guilty to 85 serious offences including rapes, sexual assaults, false imprisonment and coercive and controlling behaviour and received life imprisonment with a minimum sentence of 30 years. He had treated the women he offended against as non-humans, sometimes whistling at them like dogs and keeping them imprisoned in small spaces (Dodd, 2023) with his needs and wants taking priority. He had remained unchallenged and armed with a gun throughout this whole time, again illustrating his confidence and power, and it would be interesting in further studies to explore how these criminal perpetrators, who were public servants, responded to females in their line of duty too.
Adrian Moore is the third case of police officer involvement in VAWG. He was a serving police officer when his offending came to light and it was found that he too used his status and power as a police officer in Western Australia to commit his crimes over the period of a decade. Towie (2022) explained that Moore had drugged, raped, beaten and filmed his victims. He faced 87 charges of sexual penetration without consent, sexual coercion and aggravated indecent assault. His victims had included two police officers and it was not until 2018 when his twelfth victim went to the police and reported him that the full extent of his sexual offending became apparent. Like Carrick, he had depended on his victims being too ashamed or worried about how they would be interrogated, or disbelieved by the criminal justice staff and process to come forward (Stern 2010). Like his two British peers Moore offended over a long period of time without challenge or prosecution and also like his peers he showed ‘abject disregard ….for each victim’s dignity as a human being and for her autonomy and bodily integrity’ (Towie, 2022). Moore’s depravity had involved using vegetables, bestiality, urination and a metal hook details of which left jurors in need of counselling, and he like Couzens and Carrick abused his position of power as a senior constable, abused his uniform and police records to facilitate his serial sexual offending, and like Couzens and Carrick he showed a complete lack of remorse for his offending. All three police criminal perpetrators were untouchable for a considerable time and would not be investigated even when they took risks in plain sight. Couzens, for example, had exposed himself at a fast food restaurant where his car could be seen along with his license plate, and had been seen driving naked by a family, and had also exposed himself to a female cyclist (Dodd and Sinmaz, 2023). The risky behaviour element and also abuse of police status was clearly seen in the other two cases where Carrick intimidated his victims into submission by telling them they would not be believed against him, an armed officer, and where Moore offered to help a victim move into her place while in uniform, before later assaulting her. Couzens used COVID-19 legislation to stop Sarah Everard, he had been driving around looking for a lone female, and he like Carrick and Moore sought vulnerable women to prey on. He used his police badge, handcuffs and knowledge of the law to perpetrate his crimes against Sarah Everard while maintaining his ‘safe’ male status as a police officer and ‘hero’ to reassure his family (Dodd and Sinmaz, 2023) and to the community who should have been able to rely upon him. Steinþórsdóttir and Pétursdóttir (2022) explain that hegemonic masculinity stimulates male entitlement and that gender equality is a threat to these male officers who believe they deserve to be in a position of power because of the Ideology of what it is to be a police officer.
In all three cases it is clear to see that if victim/ survivors had not spoken up these offenders would still be perpetrating their sexual offences against women. With Couzens the earlier offences were reported but not investigated, and therefore not taken seriously. With Carrick and Moore more women came forward either to let police know about their lived-experiences at the hands of these men, or to testify against them in court even though they may face victim-blaming myths and their own characters being assassinated within the criminal justice system (Dodd, 2023; Towie, 2022). The brave women survivors still stood up to be counted and to stop these predators attacking other women.
If police colleagues were aware of the potential dangerousness of these men as witnessed by some of the nicknames they gave their peers, they did not disrupt the masculine hegemony or go outside of the ’police family’ to expose them, and if alarm bells were ringing when certain issues came to light, no action was taken. All three men sought total and absolute domination of the women they victimised and feminist theory can illustrate how and why male violence against women seeks this domination.
Popular narratives used by populist press and by policing institutions have tried to make sense of these offenders and the offences they commit as those of ‘one off offenders’, who are simply bad individuals, distinct from other men. In this way there is often a suggestion these criminals are ‘evil’ ‘monsters’ or ‘bad apples’. A feminist critique would uniquely interrogate these offenders and offences in a very different way. Feminist explorations into prevalence of male violence and the issues of power and control, as well as VAWG has illustrated that these criminals are not exceptions (Dawson, 2021). In terms of the three police officer examples in this paper, links can be clearly seen between these officers and their offending behaviours, and feminist theory provides a clear explanation about why these men feel entitled to behave in these ways within patriarchal society where males feel superior, and seek to continue this superiority (McCarthy and Taylor, 2023). Patriarchal institutions such as policing, which had been initially a male-only domain, and which maintained the culture of solidarity and loyalty in a patriarchal sense, would be an ideal place for perpetrators to flourish with warped ideas about women as other, weak and inferior. Research into women in policing illustrates how they are objectified by their male colleagues, being described as ‘split arses’, and are dehumanised in different examples by their male colleagues and sometimes by their bosses, with only an informal apology in response (Cunningham and Ramshaw, 2020).
This lack of challenge and punishment for engaging in misogynistic hate crime normalises it as horseplay and a bit of a laugh. This is a toxic environment for everyone, however for those predatory criminals this is an ideal environment as it confirms and reinforces beliefs, myths and prejudices that they hold, and this allows and emboldens those who are perpetrators to commit those crime types with impunity, over long periods of time, because they are supported. McCarthy and Taylor’s (2023) work on misogyny illustrated that the organization, in this case policing, is central to the maintenance and reproduction of misogyny. Importantly they recognise that misogyny is about systems of power that disadvantage, silence and exclude women and they provide a variety of scenarios that many women will have experienced within and across different professions. McCarthy and Taylor suggest that in terms of policing the MPS issues included’..a cumulative atmosphere of male superiority and women’s subordination, created through normalized behaviours that undermine, devalue or degrade women’ (McCarthy and Taylor, 2023; 9). Never investigating misogyny properly, or even challenging it critically adds to this unsafe environment within a policing culture which includes sharing rape jokes, and the sexualisation and objectification of women as normal. Looking again at the three cases in this study he physical and sexual violence can clearly be seen in relation to the women these men attacked in these individual cases. Their attempts of subjugation using various tools can be seen when comparing their offences to the Duluth model using the power and control wheel. In the Duluth wheel the physical and sexual violence is depicted all around the outside of the wheel (see Power and Control.pdf theduluthmodel.org, 2024). All of the tactics, used by criminal perpetrators to maintain the power and control they feel entitled to, are displayed in the spokes around the wheel. The wheel illustrates male privilege and how this is abused to maintain power, and being a male police officer this is heightened, with more status within society. Physical and sexual violence was used by all three men, and in the case of Couzens this was a brutal and fatal attack where he raped then killed Sarah Everard (Dodd and Sinmaz, 2023). Carrick and Moore also used isolation, intimidation, coercion, threats, emotional abuse too and Moore also abused pets, all of which are noted within the spokes of the Duluth wheel. Importantly all offenders also minimised, denied and tried to shift responsibility too, either to a vindictive police force which was out to get them or, in the case of Couzens, to suggest that someone else was the perpetrator, and none of these perpetrators showed remorse.
In general terms of police officers who engage in misconduct, evidence illustrates that police women have astonishingly low rates of force and misconduct (Rabe-Hemp 2008b) and that that they are much less likely than policemen to utilize extreme controlling behaviours such as threats and physical restraint (Rabe-Hemp 2008a). These findings have implications on working towards regaining police trust and legitimacy, regardless of whether these are based on women not being fully integrated into the police family as policemen are, or not (Rabe-Hemp 2008a; Stinson, Todak and Dodge, 2015). Stinson, Todak and Dodge (2015) found that in terms of misconduct, policewomen were involved in profit-related crime whereas policemen were engaged in sexual, or violent and sexual violence crime. These findings have been corroborated more recently when Cunningham (2021) studied three police force areas in England and Wales to examine male and female officer misconduct. Cunningham found that male officers were reported more for all violations than their female peers, and when the ratio of men to women was around 5: 1, men were reported up to seven times more than women for all offence types across the three force areas in England and Wales (Cunningham, 2023). In terms of culture, male officers were more involved in offence types relating to misuse of force and also abuse of authority in contrast with women officers. Women officers were, like their male peers, involved in uniform violations, driving offences and even in sharing inappropriate images with other officers, however they were not seen to have been involved in the abuse of power or using force records for their own interests, as male officers were (Cunningham 2021). Crucially, where there were inappropriate ‘relationships’ with vulnerable victim survivors of domestic and sexual assault the officers engaging in these ‘relationships’ and abuses of power were all male. Furthermore, only male officers were found to be involved in domestic violence and abuse, sexual harassment and sexual violence, and no women police officers were found to have engaged in these offences (Cunningham, 2021). Male involvement in breaches including the misuse of police data for personal reasons was also not shared by their female peers, and this was seen in the cases of Moore and Carrick in this study, as well as the engagement in sexual and or domestic violence as seen by Couzens, Carrick and Moore. While women’s opportunities to engage in these types of criminal offences may be limited due to their sex and status, radical feminists remind of the importance of power structure and patriarchy.
Radical feminists have asserted for some time that ‘Our argument is that effective policing of violence against women requires a deeper understanding of the power structure of hetero-patriarchy and the role of men’s violence in reinforcing these power inequalities’ (Hanmer, Radford and Stanko, 2013; 198). This understanding of male power and the impact of it needs to be applied to police culture too and the implications of not paying any attention to these issues can be seen in the three examples of predatory male criminal police officers. Reinforcing power inequalities by using violence can be seen in the public realm by the impact that a brutal attack on a woman has on all other women. Violence against women and girls informs and impacts upon the routine and life of many women, and while the home has been shown to be an unsafe place for many women, going outside the home has the potential for being very unsafe too (Dawson, 2021) along with victim-blaming statements that women have to face for being out on an evening, or meeting someone from a dating App, or travelling in public.
Concerns about a woman’s reputation could be part of the reason that victim-survivors of Carrick and Moore did not come forwards at first. Women constantly manage risks in terms of taking many precautions in attempts to keep themselves safe, in ways that men will never need to do, which is a clear indication of the power imbalance and inequality at play here in both the private and the public sphere. Dawson (2021) argues that the idea of the home being the most unsafe place with 58% of female homicide victims killed by partners, is as important as the fact that 42% of female homicide victims were killed by predominately male perpetrators they did not know well, and she explains that public and private violence complement and reinforce each other to keep women in their place.
It is for these reasons that police education and training should include sessions provided by rape crisis and women’s aid experts where issues such as sexual violence and domestic violence and abuse can be clearly understood as gendered crime areas with the majority of men as perpetrators, and the majority of females as victims/ survivors (Women’s Aid; Dawson, 2021). The expertise from these areas as well as the insight from feminist activists and academics ensures a complete and full understanding of the power relationships at play and the abuses and types of abuses of power undertaken by these individual men. Being able to compare these individual offences and tactics on the Duluth power and control wheel is useful in articulating how these men abused their power and reinforced their dominance over the women they came into contact with, and is useful for victim/ survivors to illustrate that they are not alone and that these tactics can be used in a variety of ways to subjugate women. Importantly, examining the police organisation and how the misogynistic culture provided the backdrop for these criminals is also vital as McCarthy and Taylor (2023) have illustrated, and they link these forms of hatred with racism and see this illustrated in the way that female journalists and politicians are abused online too. Certainly combined and shared police abuse used in WhattsApp in the UK drew on the officers racist beliefs, misogynistic views of women and homophobia (Cunningham, 2021).
Root and branch change is required to begin to address the institutional failure of not dealing with racism, sexism, misogyny and homophobia in England as well as in Australia. This should begin with an acceptance of the terms institutionalised racism and misogyny, however the last two Commissioners have not accepted this in the MPS, and have therefore missed the chance to begin to effectively deal with the institutional failings which have allowed and emboldened these criminals in uniform. This continued failure means that the institution of policing actually continues to enable men to abuse their power. This abuse of power allows offenders to use their status and public standing as police officers combined alongside their masculinity within patriarchal society to embolden their misogyny, and that acceptance and culture within policing allows them to behave in these ways. These conditions have worked together to allow predatory police perpetrators to engage in extreme sexual violence, rape and ultimately murder under cover of their police profile and persona, as well as their uniform which are all meant to signify trust and ‘safety’ to all of those they are supposed to serve, including women.
The institutional response to vetting concerns of the public about serving officers was as Dodd (2024b) explained overseen by the police, and involved lower numbers than expected. He explained that, ‘For instance the Metropolitan police said last year it was re-examining 1,131 past allegations against officers or staff merely in the category of alleged wrongdoing against women'.
In 2022, a report by the policing inspectorate lambasted vetting in law enforcement and warned of concerns about “hundreds if not low thousands” of officers.
A review by Louise Casey into the Met found that since 2013, 1,809 officers and staff had more than one allegation against them. A 2022 freedom of information request found 284 police employees with criminal convictions’ (Dodd, 2024b).
Furthermore, 128 cases were seen to be just requiring ‘management intervention’ according to the NPCC, and arguably these require further scrutiny from outside of policing. Problems in Queensland, Australia can also be seen to have merged in reaction to the recommendations of the Richard’s Report this January when Gillespie (2024) warned that the Police Integrity Unit may not be instituted. The Richard’s Report found substantial police failings and requirements for change to policing practice and culture in the form of 78 recommendations for change given the racism and misogyny examples found, but it seems unlikely that a police integrity unit will be established by May 2024 to form part of the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) (Gillespie, 2024). Gillespie’s (2024) article included Professor Prenzler’s view that “What’s important now is that the Implementation [Supervisor] urgently steps in to direct the CCC to properly establish the [police integrity unit],” he said.
“The first step is to appoint a chief executive – who should have been appointed in December 2022 – who understands the issues around police integrity and complaints, and really wants to do the job.
“We now have a second chance to fix the problem of police misconduct and ensure the democratic accountability of police in the state.” (Prenzler in Gillespie, 2024)
Without the integrity unit, the police will simply continue to police itself.
Implications from this study illustrate that policing needs interventions from outside of policing in order to prevent, disrupt and prosecute these criminals in police uniform. Cultural change is needed to prevent further offenders and this will also require external experts to provide independent and robust critique, as well as becoming the critical friends of the police, which would provide the public with some faith, and would help to re- build police legitimacy within those communities the police are supposed to represent. A critical feminist intersectional analysis to examine policing and address the racist and misogynistic culture is long overdue, and anything less is simply tinkering around the edges of this problem. We could learn much from looking to experts within this field including academics, former police officers who have experienced these problems and barriers and have blown the whistle on these crimes. The human rights commission, feminist academic experts, Women’s Aid, Reclaim the streets and Rape Crisis could add their much needed knowledge and expertise to Policing which is vital to inform change. Only with experts from outside the Police ‘family’ and with a feminist knowledge of power and control dynamics can a real, transformative difference be made, and transparency remains vital to check on progress. The systemic failure of policing to deal with the toxic culture has been seen with police bystanders not challenging their peers and Police managers prioritising police reputation above everything over a period of decades, and lack of response to such crimes illustrates reputational priority over victim-survivor justice, and certainly over the issue of VAWG. Legislative change in accepting misogyny as a hate crime is a useful necessary step in illustrating how serious this is within the policing institution, as well as within society. Revisiting radical feminist insights to develop feminist-informed education and training for all police officers would be a step forwards as would the need to develop and design strategies to deal with social media use and abuse of this involving officers. Vetting of officers requires overhaul too and must include these outside agencies. All officers who had worked with these criminals in uniform should be asked about their colleagues behaviours and attitudes – there could be alarms ringing here in newer cases which would benefit from this knowledge and understanding. In transforming cultural issues we should draw on worldwide examples. Responses to effect individual and institutional change (VEOHRC, Phase 3, 2019) in Victoria, Australia worked with the Human Rights Commission and it is important to explore what worked, and what seemed to fall short in such cases while acknowledging the many differences of policing in Australia with the UK, as well as considering some shared themes. Managers during this transformational change should expect a backlash and resistance to these cultural changes and pre-empt and deal with this. Active attempts to listen to the lived experiences of policewomen and women civilian staff, as well as BAME officers and staff should be undertaken frequently (via the use of surveys from specialists who can explore the data in relation to these problems) and would also provide some indication of problems and change. The police organization has been illustrated as reproducing and maintaining a misogynistic and racist atmosphere by normalising the degrading and subordination of women and of Black Asian and Minority Ethnic police officers and citizens as ‘other’ and inferior and this requires a genuine commitment and political will to change. Organizational analyses and challenges of misogyny could help to prevent this culture being reproduced which would allow further individuals, like the three criminals in this paper, to feel a sense of safety and security within the organization to continue to commit their individual crimes against women over long periods of time. Sadly the policing news in 2024 does not yet illustrate the political will and transparency within policing organisations in England and Wales or Australia to provide the first vital step to transformative change- real commitment to such change.
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Received: 12-Jan-2024, Manuscript No. JLERI-24-14517; Editor assigned: 13-Jan-2024, Pre QC No. JLERI-24-14517(PQ); Reviewed: 27- Jan-2024, QC No. JLERI-24-14517; Revised: 01-Feb-2024, Manuscript No. JLERI-24-14517(R); Published: 08-Feb-2024