The question I’d like to ask Cressida Dick, Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, can you give examples of sexism you have challenged during your career? Former detective superintendent Paige Kimberly was offered a part-time job after retirement back in the police force. However, before starting, she became aware of a police Whatsapp group with images and text, “Graphic, sexual and derogatory toward women.” Just like those PC who killed Sara Everard had joined. She reported the group to the person to be her line manager, and the job offer was withdrawn! So the very means by which officers with similar attitudes toward women as killer PC Wayne Couzens could be reported and stopped within the organisation was sacked! Fortunately, Paige Kimberly won at tribunal and is speaking out.
What happened to her demonstrated that the police will not change without an independent public inquiry. Like any hate philosophy, sexism is a spectrum ranging from ignorance to discrimination to harassment, flashing (visible imposing upon a woman) to sexual assault, rape (physically imposing on a woman), and murder. Having police on this spectrum costs lives even at the ignorance end – how many times does a woman have to tell the police her partner/ex-partner will kill her before they act?
I don’t understand why there was a public inquiry about race but on about sexism – are the police better in their attitudes towards women? I think it unlikely. Does it have something to do with the threat of physical violence, that desperately angry men will riot, women by enlarge don’t!
#killercops #sexismkills #everydaysexism #harassment
