Police officers should snitch on rogue colleagues to defeat the misogynistic culture in the service exposed by the Sarah Everard scandal, according to the new national lead on violence against women and girls.
Maggie Blyth, a deputy chief constable, issued a plea for officers to report any “disgusting” attitudes that colleagues display towards women while on duty.
In her first interview since taking up the newly created post last month, Blyth said the murder of Everard by a police officer had “rocked policing” and led to a “loss of public trust and confidence”.
Wayne Couzens, a Metropolitan Police diplomatic protection officer, faked an arrest to abduct Everard, 33, in south London before driving her to Kent, where he raped and murdered her. In September he was sentenced to a whole-life prison term.
Blyth said the case had triggered a root-and-branch review of misconduct cases and vetting procedures across all police forces, led by the National Police Chiefs Council. She said: “We very much want to be an upstander and not a bystander in terms of anything that should remotely suggest conduct that falls below ethical standards.
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“Shining a light [on the police] is going to mean that more matters get exposed because we do know there will be a minority . . . who are attracted into policing because of the power and authority which they think it has.”
The Everard murder led to widespread public revulsion and a torrent of misconduct claims against the police. A group of serving police officers, including three from the Met and one former Met officer, are under investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct for allegedly sharing misogynistic and racist messages on a WhatsApp group with Couzens, 48.
A Met probationary constable is also facing a misconduct meeting for sharing a “highly offensive” graphic with colleagues, during the search for Everard in March, involving a joke about luring a woman into the woods and killing her.
Last week, Sir Tom Winsor, the chief inspector of constabulary, warned that police forces were failing to kick out recruits with a propensity for violence, an unhealthy interest in exercising power and misogynistic tendencies. He told the home affairs committee of a “culture of colleague protection” within forces and revealed that a group of officers who covered up sexual offences by their colleagues faced no disciplinary action.
One of the measures to tackle the crisis is the appointment of Blyth, who became a police officer only five years ago. She joined the Hampshire force in 2016 via the fast-track direct-entry scheme.
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She said any women who felt they had been “approached inappropriately” by a police officer “must report it”. “It is vital that we have any information or intelligence about any police officer inappropriately using their warrant card or their status to attract the attention of any female,” she said. “The message I would give to women is to always report anything that feels wrong.”
Blyth also said that the police record on rape was “woeful”. Last week, the Office for National Statistics revealed that rape offences reported to police had hit a record high in England and Wales, even as the proportion of prosecuted cases plummeted to a new low of 1.4 per cent.
“We have got to make this better,” Blyth said. “I don’t think we should be looking at it from silos. I think this is collective criminal justice response, policing, courts, the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], and the voluntary sector.”
Blyth also criticised some of the comments to emerge from the policing establishment after the Everard murder. Philip Allott, the North Yorkshire police and crime commissioner, was accused of victim-blaming and forced to resign after suggesting Everard should have been more “streetwise” and should not have “submitted” to arrest by Couzens. “There is no way that this is the responsibility of any woman or any women, and the responsibility for any violence and particularly the tragic circumstances around this case are on that perpetrator, and are on men,” Blyth said.
