Wolves and Sheep: What the Sarah Everard case reveals about misogyny in policing
Following the sentencing of a Metropolitan Police officer for the murder of Sarah Everard this week (I’m not naming him, he’s had quite enough attention), I’ve been watching the reaction with interest.
Yet again, the Met continues to embarrass itself, scrambling desperately to salvage its reputation. This is akin to a never-ending game of whack-a-mole, as story after story emerges of the force’s failure to get a grip on institutionalized misogyny.
The officer who murdered Sarah Everard had a history of abusive behavior towards women. He was accused of at least four offences of exposure. As my recent blogpost argues, reported exposure incidents are dwarfed in numbers by unreported incidents. He likely committed many more such offences.
It’s also alleged that he was part of a WhatsApp group with fellow officers, in which they exchanged sexist and discriminatory messages. He was nicknamed ‘the rapist’ by colleagues. This man wasn’t a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He was a wolf in wolf’s clothing. When you put the evidence together to reveal his course of conduct, his patterns of behaviour, it was obvious that he posed a danger to women. Yet he was still an employee of the Met.
Despite increasing pressure to do so, Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick refuses to resign over this case. And it’s not difficult to see why. Should she step down, this may well add weight to the criticisms of the force. Compelling their first female commissioner to resign over allegations of institutionalized sexism and misogyny would look a bit suspect, wouldn’t it?
What is really going on within our police forces? Sarah Everard’s killer has been portrayed as an aberration, an exception to the rule. But was he?
Often, the best people to ask about misogyny in the police are people on the inside, and women in policing have had some interesting things to say in recent years.
Nusrit Mehtab, a former Superintendent, left the Met in 2020, citing allegations of sexism and racism from colleagues throughout her career. She is taking legal action against the force.
This is not the progressive, inclusive, caring and reassuring image that the 43 police forces across England and Wales have tried hard to reinforce in recent years as they attempt to distance themselves from a male-dominated canteen culture infused with misogyny. This was the type of police force revealed in portrayals like Roger Graef’s 1982 documentary A Complaint of Rape and the accounts of former senior female officers like Jackie Malton – the inspiration for the fictional character Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect.
Workforce statistics are often presented as evidence of the dawn of the new era in policing, in which the proportion of female officers grows year on year. For example, at the present time, nearly one-third of police officers are women, compared to just over one-quarter in 2010[i].
But is it as simple as ‘Just add women and stir?’. Absolutely not.
Academic research has revealed that despite attempts to recruit more women and create an inclusive ethos, elements of the macho, sexist, ‘traditional’ cop culture - first written about by Reiner[ii] in 1986 - are still very much present today. In research by Brown and colleagues[iii], with 169 senior women in policing, participants shared their views on how much forces really had changed,
Generally more inclusive, but the discrimination has become more subtle, and the status quo is hard to shift - it talks of reform - but stays the same. (Inspector, 29 years of service).
Issues such as sexism, homophobia and racism are talked about openly now and I do feel that we are making progress in terms of people feeling supported to be their authentic selves…I still think there is a long way to go to remove unconscious bias though amongst all ranks and roles, officers and staff and comments are still made that make me question how far we have really come. (Middle manager, 14 years ‘service).
As such, it could be argued that the rhetoric doesn’t match the reality. Cultural change – change in values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours, is tough to achieve. Systemic, structural transformation is about so much more than media-friendly, fashionable, ‘woke’ new policies or campaigns. The latter are merely sheep’s clothing, in which the wolf of misogyny continues to hide.
It could be argued that policing is now saturated with gender-blind sexism, “blatant sexism is supposedly rejected, yet sexist ideologies, policies and practices continue”[iv].
Combatting misogyny has become something of a PR exercise within police forces, a performance put on to make it appear they are doing the right things, whilst a peek backstage reveals something altogether different. When cases like the murder of Sarah Everard come to light, it reveals that within police forces, canteen culture simmers away.
Clear misogynistic words and acts are no longer ‘acceptable’, but the values underpinning them remain. Officers with sexist views know that they can’t air them in the same way they could 30 or 40 years ago. They can’t slap female colleagues on the arse in the office anymore or call them ‘Doris’. Now it’s in a ‘private’ chat with a fellow misogynist, it’s in a look, it’s in a WhatsApp group. Sexism and misogyny is more clandestine and surreptitious now. You may not be able to ‘see’ it, but as Brown and colleagues’ participants said, it’s very much still there.
The project of cultural change within policing has not eradicated misogyny, it’s simply pushed it down beneath the surface. Senior figures like Cressida Dick simply lift up the deep carpets of their plush offices, and sweep the problems underneath them.
This is the denial that Stanley Cohen talked about in his book, States of Denial[v]. Denial can be literal, ‘Nothing to see here, move along’, simply refusing to accept that the problem is there. That’s most obvious in things like glossy recruitment brochures depicting inclusion though images of smiling officers from all walks of life and social groups chatting amicably with the public. Denial can also be interpretive, by acknowledging that there is an issue, but interpreting the facts in a way that justifies not acting on them: Sarah Everard’s killer was just a wrong ‘un, a bad apple, and there are bad apples like this in every organization, not much we can do about that. Denial can also be implicatory, shifting and downplaying the implications of a problem, dancing around what should happen to solve it. The recent suggestion by the Met that women should be the ones to call for help and raise the alarm if they feel threatened by a lone male police officer diverts our attention from why they aren’t ensuring that officers like Sarah Everard’s killer aren’t sworn in in the first place.
It’s time that the Met stopped denying that misogyny exists within their organization. We don’t care about the staged performance of anti-discrimination anymore, we’ve seen the reality beyond the rhetoric, the wolf behind the sheep’s clothing. Unless this is tackled, we’ll continue to see more cases like that of Sarah Everard.
[i] Home Office (2021). Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2021. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2021/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2021#frontline-and-local-policing
[ii] Reiner, R. (1986). The Politics of the Police. Brighton: Wheatsheaf.
[iii] Brown, J., Fleming, J., Silvestri, M., Linton, K., & Gouseti, I. (2019). Implications of police occupational culture in discriminatory experiences of senior women in police forces in England and Wales. Policing and society, 29(2), 121-136.
[iv] Stoll, L. C., Lilley, T. G., & Pinter, K. (2017). Gender-blind sexism and rape myth acceptance. Violence against women, 23(1), 28-45.
[v] Cohen, S. (2001). States of denial: knowing about atrocities and suffering. Oxford: Wiley.
