10 Feb Most female police officers will have encountered misogyny, says former Met officer
MOST female police officers will have encountered misogyny on the job, according to a former Metropolitan Police Service officer.
Chris Hobbs, commenting on the sentencing of serial rapist police officer David Carrick, told GB News: “What’s happened recently is absolutely dreadful and you can see why people would be wary of police officers and approaching police officers if they’re in trouble.
“How prevalent is it? Personally speaking, in terms of sexual offences, I don’t think it’s that prevalent.
“We’ve had two dreadful cases together. Misogyny within the police, which is at a different level.
“Probably most female officers would say yes, at some stage in my career, I’ve experienced misogyny by serving officers.
“However, the crunch would be with female officers, if you ask them in your 25-30 year service, do you find the overwhelming majority of police officers trustworthy and professional? I think and certainly the ones I’ve spoken to that I used to work with would say, yes, I would.
“But unfortunately, what we do have is a minority who are a disgrace”.
In a discussion with Patrick Christys, he said: “There’s no doubt about it at the moment, recruitment, vetting is a real problem and it’s been allowed to slide when we’ve had cuts and that’s had an impact on it.
“But it’s worth remembering that Carrick joined in 2001, [Wayne] Couzens joined the Kent police in 2008 and I suspect that whatever went on with Couzens wasn’t picked up when the Met took him on.
“This has all been looked at by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate, and their report really is quite shocking in terms of the number of people who have either had some convictions and got through the vetting or got relatives who have got serious convictions.”
He added: “In my day, if there was anything doubtful about you at all, you wouldn’t get in, if you had an uncle who was a bit of a criminal you wouldn’t get in, if your neighbours were known criminals, you wouldn’t get in.
“That seems to have softened. And then we’ve had the cuts. And now we are getting some who frankly, shouldn’t be in but I would stress they are a minority.
“IThe majority of officers male and female officers I worked with were brilliant, but there were probably around 40 who I met in my 32 years who I thought you shouldn’t be in.”
He said Carrick should get a whole-life prison term: “I think most of the Metropolitan Police, serving and retired, would say the same thing: whole life without a doubt.
“It makes our job much more difficult. It means they’re much more vulnerable to abuse and being attacked. It means I can’t always give the help that they might want to give.
“When I was in the police, probably on six occasions when I was off duty I encountered distressed females and I would approach them and say I’ve got a warrant card, I’m a police officer, what’s wrong?
“I was concerned that they might have just been sexually assaulted but in every case it was fairly minor boyfriend trouble.
“But now the thought is that if I did that now and approached someone who was distressed with a warrant card, they would probably be horrified.”
