Centre for Women’s Justice was approached by Chloe*, who had worked for a police force in England in a senior role for many years.
She was deeply frustrated after years of seeing misogynistic attitudes by police officers in the course of her work. It began with the way some officers dealt with reports of sexual offences and domestic abuse. Some sexual offences reported were recorded as ‘no crime’ and scenes of crime not attended, based on biased assessments. Some victims who were vulnerable due to disabilities or mental health problems and subjected to domestic abuse or targeted by sexual predators, were not taken seriously.
Chloe and a female colleague began to raise concerns with others within the force about inappropriate things they were seeing in investigations. They also complained about attitudes they heard towards women by male officers they worked with, including sexual harassment of some female staff. As a result of raising these concerns Chloe and her colleague were victimised and ostracised, and this began to snowball.
Chloe and her female colleague contacted the Professional Standards Department, who deal with misconduct by police officers, and reported WhatsApp groups amongst officers that they knew about with sexist and misogynistic content, including posting pictures of male genitalia, manufactured and graphic images, comments putting women down and racist and rape jokes. They felt that if victims of sexual offences knew about this sort of material they wouldn’t feel comfortable reporting to those officers. After this was investigated by Professional Standards no disciplinary action was taken, only words of advice given to some individuals. When they expressed their dissatisfaction with the lack of a strong response Chloe and her colleague were told that a training talk would be given to address the problem.
Chloe and her colleague made complaints about Professional Standards, but were victimised in further attempts to silence them. They put in grievances about this and were put under even more pressure.
Centre for Women’s Justice obtained free legal advice for Chloe from a barrister who specialises in the law on whistle-blowers, to advise her of her rights. Chloe wishes to see change at a systemic level and for those in senior positions to be accountable for police culture.
*not her real name
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