Letter from East London

Women in policing, in the twentieth century, meant for many (mostly men) Sgt. Pepper Anderson patrolling the streets of L.A. in “Police Woman.” Angie Dickinson’s only complaint about her groundbreaking role was that it seemed the phone always rang while she was taking a bath. Nearly fifty years since, in the twenty-first century, just how far have women come in our police forces? Emma Cunningham, a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of East London, tells us in her new book, “Women in Policing,” an excerpt from which she kindly shares here.

Cunningham has taught under- and post-graduate students for more than twenty years, and has lectured to local, national, and international police officers. She was also involved in the England-Africa Partnership between staff at the University of Teesside in northeastern England, the Kigali Institute of Education at the National University of Rwanda, and the Rwanda National Police, where was an external examiner in 2007-8. Just this year she was appointed an external examiner at the University of Hull, and just last month presented “Enabling Female Leaders To Succeed: Examining The Landscape Of Women In Policing” to the Women in Policing conference organized by Dods, in London. She is interested in Wollstonecraft (if you have to ask, you are seriously under-feministic; me too), feminism, domestic and sexual violence, citizenship, human rights, and women and policing, all of which inform her research.

She starts her excerpt here, where research always begins: with the data she found.

The data I found certainly contrasts with the ideas from Reece and Strange (2019), whose work Laverick had cited (2021), in relation to the initial fears that when women joined the police, they would form inappropriate relationships with policemen and suspects. This research illustrates, in contrast to this fear, that it is inappropriate relationships between policemen and vulnerable victims of crime, not policewomen, that can clearly be noted in the data. While these relations have been noted by the Independent Office For Police Conduct (IOPC, 2020), further longitudinal studies on police behaviours, ethics, and disciplines are required in a much larger study. I would suggest that a national review of police disciplinary behaviour in England and Wales be undertaken to see what the findings are across England and Wales. This is especially relevant given the examples of exposing the penis, relationships with junior staff, inappropriate comments, sexual harassment, database searches for personal use, and sexual relationships with victims of crime, as seen in the disciplinary data in the Australian case (Bucci, 2020). Differences could be seen in policemen’s and policewomen’s discipline records in relation to the use of force too. While Simpson and Croft’s (2020) findings suggest that women officers in uniform are perceived as being as aggressive as men, the findings about women officers and their actual disciplinary records illustrate a difference between perception of aggression and practice.

These findings show that toxic masculinity and misogyny can still be seen to inform the kinds of offences that male police officers are involved in. The Australian investigation and the recent real-world example of the news report about the reinstated officer in Victoria (Bucci, 2020) illustrate that there is a long way to go in terms of successfully dealing with these officers. Backlash against change alongside the continuance of the worst elements of ‘police culture’ can also be seen in policing in England and Wales in these findings. My findings were confirmed by those of Stinson, Todak, and Dodge (2013), who earlier found in their study in America that while policewomen’s offences fell into the ‘profit-related’ category on the whole, this was in contrast to policemen’s offences, which were seen to be more often in the ‘sex-related’ or ‘violence-related’ and sexual violence categories. This worrying trend seen in America, Australia, and England and Wales, as illustrated in findings in each of these areas, illustrates a problem with misogyny within police culture. Utilising an intersectional feminist lens allows this discussion about how these findings fit in patriarchal society alongside expectations about the nature of woman and man. Long after Wollstonecraft’s critique of inequality in the eighteenth century in England, these findings illustrate that misogyny still informs society in general, and in particular is mirrored in these offence types in worldwide policing disciplinary examples today, illustrating the globalisation of police culture as explained by Brown and Heidensohn (2000).

In the last few days of writing this book, a young woman, Sarah Everard, who had been missing after walking home from her friend’s house in London, was found murdered. The main suspect in this case is a serving Metropolitan Police Officer, Wayne Couzens, who has been arrested and charged, along with a female who allegedly assisted an offender. It has been confirmed in the news that this officer had been involved in a sexual offence of indecent exposure days before the alleged kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard (Chakrabarti, 2021). This whole shocking case has ignited debate about how women have had to get used to, and live with the constant threat of male violence in everyday life. While unions and women’s groups (Northern Trades Union Congress, March 13, 2021) were attempting to reclaim the streets, the police were worried that a vigil for Sarah would break lockdown measures, and so approached the courts for a decision, which resulted in a suggestion that both sides work together. This case impacts on the feeling of safety of all women when regardless of the care taken by them to avoid harm, this woman was murdered by a police officer whose job is to keep all citizens safe. The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) are undoubtedly as shocked as everyone else about this.

Details of officer discipline on a national level require outside full and rigorous scrutiny if any attempt at legitimacy in policing is to be approached, and where predatory behaviours from officers are found, they should be clearly dealt with so that these behaviours do not become emboldened. This full and rigorous discipline was not evidenced recently in England and Wales when the IOPC were considered ineffective, as fewer than one in ten police officers were fired after gross misconduct in England and Wales (Busby, 2021). I would suggest, given the findings here, and issues in relation to police discipline, that if officers are flagged up as engaging in misogynistic offences and behaviours, this should be an indicator that there is potential for worse misdeeds or offences. An editorial in The Guardian (March 11, 2021) suggested that without safety for women and girls, there can be no equality, and they cite levels of harassment and violence against women and girls from a UK UN study. They note that six women and a little girl were reported killed in the period Sarah Everard went missing. Importantly, they suggest legislative change, but also change in terms of our expectations for girls and boys, where girls should not have to shrink their lives to remain safe, and where boys should respect girls and women and should challenge when this is not happening. In Australia, Gorman (2021) expected demonstrations and protests against gendered discrimination and violence against women in March 2021 in the March4justice. Even within the Sarah Everard murder investigation a probationer police officer was removed from public-facing duties after sharing an inappropriate graphic via WhatsApp with his colleagues (Dodd, 2021). He had been involved in the search for Sarah Everard, and was reported by his colleagues for this communication. Disturbingly, this was a relatively new police officer displaying this misogynistic behaviour, which confirms that this is not just a case of being informed by police culture, as he is new; rather, this illustrates that such notions prevail in society and are taken on board by some men who behave in a way which illustrates that they are happy to dehumanise women in their everyday life and work. The Observer used Freedom of Information requests to obtain disciplinary data in relation to MPS officers. Their FOI study confirmed similar findings to mine in that there were cases involving an officer having sexual intercourse with a rape victim, domestic violence and abuse, and misogynistic offences against women in society by policemen (Townsend and Jayanetti, 2021). This again illustrates ‘institutional misogyny’ as a major problem alongside what we have seen in relation to institutional racism, and as illustrated in The Observer report as well as seen in my FOI data, the misogynistic police culture intensified at the intersections of race and gender. Worryingly, if MPS Commissioner Cressida Dick does not acknowledge institutional racism in MPS, it is unlikely she will accept institutional misogyny either.

Only with a feminist perspective that is aware of the struggle and continual backlash that feminism has faced and continues to face, and the current issues in relation to public order policing today, especially as recently witnessed with the manhandling and rough police tactics used at the peaceful vigil for Sarah Everard at Clapham Common in London (March 2021), can policing retain legitimacy and public confidence for all citizens. With the shift to a more authoritarian approach to policing protests requested by Home Secretary Priti Patel and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) (Siddiqui, 2021) and during the COVID-19 pandemic, attempts to curb the human rights of citizens to protest are being made within the police, crime, sentencing, and courts bill 2021. This bill extends stop and search powers and limits demonstrations like Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Extinction Rebellion (XR). The disturbing reality from the fourth female home secretary and the first female MPS commissioner is that they are leading this call for stronger police powers. Chakrobarti (2021) reminds in her opinion piece, that these women pushing for stronger state action in relation to citizens is a bitter feminist irony, and that it is the system that requires change, not simply the faces within it. In the same week as Meghan Markle came under racist attack and we celebrated International Women’s Day in March 2021, the shameful events of Saturday, March 13, at Clapham Common where females protesting against male violence and misogyny were manhandled by the police illustrates a long way for policing to go in England and Wales. Calls for the resignation of Dick have been made (Chakrobarti, 2021) as well as women’s groups suggesting they no longer have confidence in her leadership of MPS.

The brutal murder of Sarah Everard allegedly by a serving police officer, has sparked a moment in England and Wales where women have noted their own everyday negotiation of their space in relation to their own safety and their continual avoidance of their own victimisation, which is unacceptable, unequal, and requires a feminist understanding and response. Exposure to everyday sexism and racism may be on the agenda for a while, and perhaps those who will produce policy in relation to opposing Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) should look at these debates again and take these into account when addressing these perspectives. Review of policing practice in England and Wales is urgently required to address the misogyny within policing (which has been seen in some of the examples within this book to persist in America and Australia as well as England and Wales), to prevent these outdated ideas about the nature of woman still informing male harassment, violence against, and the murder of, women. The police got this operation wrong, and even given the ‘fiendishly hard’ balance of public order and the pandemic as described by Dick (BBC News, March 15, 2021), the women at the peaceful vigil to remember Sarah and to protest about male violence against them in society should not have been met with police manhandling and handcuffs.

Postscript

Sadly, since completing this book we now understand that Sarah Everard had been kidnapped, raped, and killed before being burned by a serving Metropolitan Police Service officer who used not only his position of power as a policeman but also his warrant card, handcuffs, and ultimately his police belt to facilitate this pre-planned, heinous crime during the lockdown which accompanied COVID-19 in London 2021. Former police officer Couzens was given a whole life sentence to reflect his misuse of his role and police powers, and abuse of his trust. This case clearly illustrates the concerns voiced within my research about misogyny in police culture, as well as the need for much further scrutiny of police disciplinary records especially where former crimes are flagged which illustrate these misogynistic offences.