Category: acab

In which the police do nothing but endanger a survivor

The police have been watching Youtube, and spotted a video of a young man being homophobically abused by a self-styled “Muslim patrol”. In their keenness to prosecute, they have done something unforgivably awful. The man who received the abuse has not come forward, so the police have released his picture in an attempt to get him to do so.

This is vile behaviour on a number of levels. There is absolutely no respect for the man’s decision not to come forward, a decision which many survivors of many crimes of structural violence make. These decisions are often made for good reasons: the police are pretty fucking awful on taking such crimes seriously for the most part, and as a result, many people who experience oppression mistrust the police. Maybe the man who has had his picture out there did not trust the police to treat what happened to him sensitively or effectively, and the benefits of engaging with the police vastly outweighed the costs.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that the police actively harm and harass people who are already on the receiving end of a whole heap of structural violence. The police are just another gang of oppressors, albeit worse-dressed. I doubt putting this man’s pictures everywhere is going to endear the police to him, when it strikes me that this is nothing more than another form of using their power to harass.

And what if the man was not out? What if he wanted to remain anonymous for the simple fact that nobody knew of his sexual orientation and he preferred it that way? What if he has good reasons for not being out–such as not wanting to be on the receiving end of further violence? What if the police just outed someone because they felt that whatever they’re trying to do is more important than respecting this person’s privacy?

What the police have done here is betray a staggering lack of respect for the private life of an individual they are disingenuously pretending to be helping. A part of me hopes that this was simply that they didn’t think things through, because the alternative is too grim to consider. Did they do this, knowing how dangerous it would be for the man in the picture, in the hope of ratcheting up the abuse and forcing him to come forward?

What they have done here is demonstrate, once again, whose side they are on. It is not the side of survivors, but their own side, and they’ll shit all over survivors to get what they want.

Dawn raids for perpetrators of abuse: something doesn’t sit right

Trigger warning for domestic violence

Imagine you’re in an abusive relationship. Imagine you’re asleep in your bed, your abusive partner snoring next to you. Perhaps you sleep fitfully, or perhaps you are sound asleep and drained. Suddenly, your slumber is interrupted by a loud banging at the door. It startles you awake. Maybe you are scared of your violent partner’s reaction to being awoken by this cacophony. Nothing good can come from this knock on the door so early in the morning, and you’re terrified of what it may mean.

Maybe you answer the door, or maybe it is kicked in. Either way, there are police swarming round your house. You’re not decent, perhaps you managed to get your dressing gown on. They flock towards your partner. You’re still not quite sure exactly what’s going on, you’re confused, startled and frightened. The police grab your partner. Maybe your partner looks at you with blame in their eyes, and you know they think you called the cops. You didn’t.

This morning, the Met proudly tweeted that they have been undertaking dawn raids on perpetrators of domestic violence, culminating in, as the BBC reports, 264 arrests. In a show of class, the Met also decided to tweet a picture of themselves outside someone’s house, probably easily identifiable to anyone who knows those who live there. Judging by the force’s use of the hashtag #SpeakOut, and contextualising these tweets among others encouraging third-parties to report domestic violence they think may be happening, it looks as though the abuse survivors may have been as surprised by these dawn raids as the perpetrators.

While domestic violence is a pressing and serious matter, it strikes me that what the police are doing probably isn’t a particularly sensitive intervention for the survivors. In many cases, the survivor will live with the perpetrator, so it’s not just the perpetrator’s home being stormed, it’s the survivor’s.

This is exacerbated by the emotional side of abuse: it’s never just physical. In many cases, it is not just fear which prevents the survivor from leaving the situation, but the complicated relationship dynamics. There’s often a hefty dose of emotional abuse in abusive relationships, leaving survivors feeling that there is nowhere else for them to go. Sometimes this might take the form of “it’s us against the world”. This could very easily be exacerbated by the police suddenly dragging a partner out of your bed.

Then there’s the fact that these arrests probably aren’t going to keep the perpetrator away forever. They’ll be released, whether it’s within hours, days, or months. I can’t imagine that none of them will blame their partners for this arrest, and this is likely to have dire consequences for survivors.

Of course, not all abuse is the same, and not all survivors feel the same. There might be some survivors who would welcome this sort of intervention, but thinking back on my own personal experiences, this would be literally the last thing in the world I’d want.

It’s important that we are more aware of people we know who might be in abusive relationships, but it’s also crucial to respect their wishes and offer support as a community. Dawn raids based on reports to the police are an unsustainable and, in many cases, unhelpful response. Instead, we must keep our eyes open, and support anyone we may know who needs help, in the ways that they want.

Police taser a blind guy: there’s a scientific reason they’re bastards here

In the news today, a police officer tasered a blind man for walking down the street with a stick. Apparently the poor little copper was frightened by the victim’s white stick, and thought it was a samurai sword, so attacked him with a deadly weapon. The context behind this event was that the police had heard that apparently someone was wandering around with a samurai sword, which really doesn’t give the copper any excuse because the sticks used by blind people to navigate look exactly fuck all like a samurai sword.

Now this is hardly the first time a police officer has developed very questionable judgment of the nature of a threat: recall the case of Delroy Smellie, who beat the fuck out of a woman for waving a juice box. He told the court that he’d thought it was a weapon–a fucking juice box!–and was acquitted.

Obviously, I’m hardly going to rule out the parsimonious explanation that these cops are simply just lying bastards. However, even the nice cops will be susceptible to this effect, as once again science proves that all coppers are bastards (for those interested in more science about why the police differ from the non-porcine population, please read this overview).

A study conducted this year–unfortunately paywalled, but summarised here–found that when people are holding a weapon, they are more likely to think that others are holding weapons. They’re also more likely to get jumpy.

The participants in this study were given one of two objects to hold: a foam ball, or a toy gun. They were then shown people holding objects: sometimes neutral, like drink cans, but sometimes guns. Those who were holding toy guns were far more likely to classify the innocuous objects as guns. There was no effect if the toy gun was just near the participant, rather than in their hands.

Furthermore–and this bit is less clear in both the abstract of the study and the summary–participants were more likely to raise the toy gun in response to a perceived “threat”: again, remember this “threat” is nothing more than a drink can.

The researchers concluded that this effect is due to perceiving the environment in terms of intended action: by holding the gun, people switched into an “I intend to use this gun” frame of mind, and began to see the world differently and seeing people as threats.

Now think about how this applies to the police, a group who are typically armed as part of the job. They walk around with batons incredibly close to their hands, and are sometimes instructed to draw them as part of standard public order procedure. When even normal people suddenly start perceiving the world as being full of threats and weapons, is it really any surprise that the cops do routinely?

It’ll only get worse if Bernard Hogan-Howe gets his way; he wants to stick a taser in every police car, which will likely result in increasingly edgy and trigger-happy cops whizzing round London. I can’t say I’m comfortable with this.

There’s a decent explanation for police being trigger-happy, but this doesn’t make it right in the slightest. In fact, it’s an argument to move towards disarming the police force: keep the weapons hard to get hold of, and maybe they’ll stop harming innocents.

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Thanks @gmartin for telling me about this study

What is the optimal level of clothing to avoid prison?

In shit-I-can’t-believe-I-need-to-say-in-20-fucking-12, people shouldn’t be sent to prison for the clothes they choose to wear. Or not wear. But yet, apparently I need to say this shit because apparently the legal system doesn’t fucking get it, and neither do various cheerleaders for the legal system.

First there’s the “naked rambler”, who, as his title suggests, rambles while naked. It’s a completely desexualised nudity. It’s just a naked bloke walking through the countryside. Who keeps getting sent to prison, because apparently the law doesn’t like it when people walk around naked.

Then there’s the young woman who was arrested for refusing to remove a scarf at the culmination of a campaign of police intimidation. Ellen Yianni was cleared, and the judge was quite, quite horrified by the state of the police testimony.

Then there’s  the case of Barry Thew, who went to prison for wearing a T-shirt. The T-shirt in question was somewhat distasteful and very crudely made, saying something about killing police. He has been sentenced to an eight-month prison sentence, of which he’ll serve at least four.

The thing is, the mainstream media has reported the whole thing very badly, making out like he made the T-shirt upon hearing that some police officers had died and just went around trolling the world for no goddamn reason whatsoever.

In fact, a more detailed local news report reveals the truth to be far more complicated than that.

He was wearing the t-shirt before the incident. The T-shirt went from being “somewhat distasteful” to “highly fucking distasteful” because he happened to be wearing it on a day that some police officers were killed. On any other day, he would have gone out in that T-shirt and yes, people would have been offended, but he probably wouldn’t have gone to prison. A coincidence contextualised the T-shirt into being more offensive than it otherwise would have been.

And so, if context is pertinent, i.e. that he was wearing the T-shirt on a day some police officers died, then it’s important to look at other context to the story. Like the fact that Barry Thew had mental health problems, and was taking medication. The judge didn’t think this was relevant, instead opting for swivel-eyed retribution.

Or another piece of crucial context, unremarked upon by most of the mainstream stories: three years ago, Barry Thew’s son was killed by police.

Now, I’m not surprised the media didn’t bother mentioning this. They have a cosy relationship with the police, and it’s in everyone’s interest to make out like it’s inexplicable and Barry Thew was merely some sort of funeral-picketing monster. Mentioning these important details might have the effect of generating a degree of understanding and thus increasing outcry against the sentence.

Which, by the way, would still be ridiculous if Barry Thew had just quickly knocked up a T-shirt about dead cops upon hearing the news, with no prior grudges against the police, just to troll the fuck out of the world.

What one wears or does not wear should not be a matter for the police, the legal system or prison.  To use the state to crack down on the garments people wear is absurd, and hardly fitting for any country that calls itself democratic. They might call a flapping dick on a rambler obscene, but what’s really obscene is that they’re using their disproportionate power to regulate what people wear.

The Met make a rudimentary effort to tackle rape culture. Poorly.

The Met have finally noticed they have a terrible problem with rape, spotting it as figures for people reporting rape to the police have taken a dive recently. So they appointed a shiny new head of their Sapphire unit, and in an interview with the Guardian he has announced the changes he will make.

He has plans for environmental interventions to tackle rape, notably using licencing laws to get pubs and bars where rape and sexual assault are prevalent shut down, and increase surveillance of men who have never been charged with rape, but intelligence suggests they are perpetrators.

Neither of these measures strike me as particularly effective in dealing with rape culture. Are there pubs and clubs which are “rape-hotspots”, or is it more that the heterosexual “pulling” scene enables rape and sexual assault rather easily. Meanwhile, the covert policing tactics are creepy, immoral, and will increase a perception of perpetrators as “the real victims” of rape. Furthermore, how exactly will they be getting this information? What makes some men pre-predators in the Met’s book?

Basically, these are rather authoritarian and punitive measures for dealing with a problem which is societal.

The good news is, this probably won’t really be the focus of the Met’s new approach to rape, because the new chief is also going to focus on women, raising awareness about how they can “reduce vulnerability”. Yeah, so they’ve not changed at all in their stance towards victim blaming.

To sum up his approach, then, women should be a bit more careful, alcohol is definitely to blame, so maybe avoid going to pubs the Met don’t close down. Also, there’s some men who are predators, but the rest of them are probably all right.

Ineffectual, and fairly offensive.

What the Met should be doing (if they don’t go and live in the sewers and bother us no more) is looking at the shit in their own backyard. They contribute wholesale to rape culture. They’ve been implicated in huge failures to investigating rape, in ways which are criminally negligent. They have been implicated in rapes. When they actually bother investigating, it is half-arsed or downright invasive for the women.

And they just don’t understand rape and rape culture.

They have a lot of work to do themselves, but rather than focus on their own failings, they’re pointing to the nearest ghastly nightclub with a sticky floor and screaming “SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING.”

Society as a whole is fairly weak on its understanding of rape culture, and the police don’t help at all.

ACAB forever: how the police cover up to make us forget

Two stories of police bastardry have come to light in the last few days. First, a police officer who wilfully failed to investigate rape cases properly (who I previously wrote about here) is in court for misconduct for this behaviour. His behaviour went on for three years, and only came to light long after the fact. Secondly–and this is a huge one–the Hillsborough report has revealed the true extent of how badly the police fucked up.

41 of the 96 people who died in the disaster could have lived were it not for the behaviour of the police and emergency services. The police then went on to cover this up, defaming the dead and smearing Liverpool fans as violent drunks who were to blame for the tragedy. It wasn’t true. It was never true, but the police colluded with the media and the coroner and the original inquest to make a concerted effort for people to believe it. It took 23 years for the truth to finally come out.

This pattern–the act, the cover-up, the truth only emerging long after the damage has been done–is seen repeatedly in police behaviour. Jean Charles de Menezes. Ian Tomlinson. Stephen Lawrence. They fuck up. Sometimes they kill. Sometimes they are negligent. Either way, they work as hard as possible to ensure that the truth never sees the light of day. Sometimes it can take decades to find out what really happened.

In a lot of cases, we’ll probably never know. These are the collusions and cover-ups we know about.

It serves a powerful function. It stops us from seeing the true, vicious face of the police, makes us forget that we cannot trust them. Even if the truth eventually emerges, it is long after the fact, and many handwave this away by saying “they’re not like that any more”.

They are still like that, but it will take years to see this, and then people will assume that surely, by now, they must have moved on. But they probably will not. There is too much trust in the police, which is repeatedly betrayed then hidden by spin and lies.

Don’t trust the police. While some of them may be decent human beings, many are not. And even the good ones are complicit in this culture of secrecy.

The legal system and cultural problems: why street harassment won’t be criminalised, and shouldn’t be.

The Guardian rather melodramatically reports “Sexist remarks and wolf whistles could become criminal offences“. From that headline, you might be forgiven for thinking that street harassment could become a crime in the near future. Actually, that isn’t the case, as is outlined in paragraph 8, where a government spokesperson specifically says that wolf-whistling and the kind of unpleasant bog-standard street harassment comments won’t be criminalised. So, let’s pause to give the Guardian some golf-claps for some woefully misleading reporting, then let’s batten down the hatches and wait for the men’s rights types who would never read all the way down to the eighth paragraph of a news story to find out what’s going on to kick up a fuss.

Now, it’s easy to see why the Guardian might have got the wrong end of the stick on how it would be possible to criminalise street harassment. David Cameron will be signing the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women. At the time of writing, actually finding the full text of the Convention led to a jolly bilingual 404, but the pertinent bit as quoted in the Guardian is this:

Among the pledges in the convention… is one to pass legislation or other measures to criminalise or impose other sanctions for “unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, in particular when creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”.

This is certainly pertinent to street harassment, which creates an environment which is intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive, and props to the Guardian for recognising this. However, criminalising street harassment would change absolutely nothing whatsoever, and possibly make things worse.

The thing is, street harassment is a symptom of a culture wherein women are viewed as somehow less than people, less than human. Women are viewed as objects, and therefore don’t get the basic level of respect that allows us to walk down the street without a creepy “HEEEEY LADY”. In fact, we’re expected to appreciate this, because apparently we exist entirely for men to look at and stamp us with their manly seal of manly approval. There’s a whole set of underlying attitudes that need unlearning at a societal level, and criminalising a behaviour from individuals cannot do this.

Let’s talk about efficacy first. The Guardian article came out more than six months ago (yet is inexplicably trending today), long after David Cameron has signed this pledge. He hasn’t stopped doing things that create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive environment for women himself. If the legal system were to genuinely sanction people for their role in this culture, Cameron would be a convicted criminal. Admittedly, all he’s done is sign the pledge and hasn’t actually bothered bringing in any changes to the law, which is–and I hate to say this–probably a good thing.

Let us imagine a world in which street harassment is a criminal act, for which the penalty is a fine. I’m basing my assumptions on it being similar to Section 5 of the Public Order Act, which refers to behaviour causing harassment, alarm and distress (which actually covers the worst of street harassment anyway, so there wouldn’t really need to be a new law).

The most famous recent Section 5 case was that of John Terry, who racially abused a fellow footballer on the pitch. Despite the fact he was shown using racist language targeted at this person, John Terry was acquitted. There’s now a frightening number of people who think that it’s unfair to call John Terry a racist because he was never convicted in a court of law, despite the fact that in this incident, he was blatantly racist. The criminal proceedings actually made it harder to point out this ingrained and unacceptable racism, because suddenly apologists can cling desperately on to an inadequate legal system. John Terry got off. That doesn’t make his actions okay in the slightest.

What criminalising actions does is shift the blame on to individuals, ignoring the system which allows this to happen. These individuals are either innocent or guilty, and discussion of the cultural backdrop and whether such actions are acceptable can be effectively shut down with reference to woefully narrow legal definitions and cases.

A further unpleasant effect to criminalising street harassment would be the policing of this law. If the cops bothered enforcing it, they probably wouldn’t do a very good job of it. They kind of suck at policing violence against women anyway. At best, they’d be completely negligent. At worst, they’d use it as an additional stick to harass the groups they tend to harass: young men, black men, poor men.

There is no way that the individual responsibility enshrined in the legal system could possibly lead to the cultural shift that would end the day-to-day harassment that women face. It needs work on a societal level, a full transformation. We all need to work towards building a society wherein oppression is unacceptable, we all need to learn and to unlearn. It’s a Herculean task, and it feels so much easier to ask the legal system to stick a plaster over the gaping wounds. But this is not the way to achieve change.

 

The #PornTrial reveals the prejudices (and possible peccadilloes) of the CPS

Today, a man was found not guilty of a crime which harmed no-one, and should never have been considered criminal in the first place. His offence? He had some porn in his email which involved scenes of consensual fisting, urethral sounding and a man wearing a gas mask. Oh, and he’d pissed off some cops by prosecuting them for disciplinary offences, which I’m sure has absolutely nothing to do with the decision to prosecute him.

It seems ridiculous to prosecute a person for this in the first place, especially considering the last fisting trial ruled that fisting is not obscene. Like bluebottles bashing their heads against a window, the CPS decided this time to prosecute under a different act relating to extreme pornography and harm. Despite evidence from two medical professionals describing the minimal harm involved, the CPS still insisted on pushing the harm line.

The risible excuse for evidence presented by the prosecution was at best wobbly, and at worst, outright offensive, for example:

 CPS – Walsh fantasised about being involved in being in an orgy.

Yes. The defendant’s fantasies were used as evidence against him. A not uncommon fantasy, either. And something which is perfectly legal for consenting adults to participate in, whether in person or on film.

Not content to merely stigmatise what people think about, despite it being thoroughly irrelevant to the case, the CPS also decided to go after people who get regular sexual health checks.

Astonishing that CPS have contended in Court that people who attend sexual health clinics engage in more risky practices.

In fact, regular health checks are a responsible thing to do, and to attempt to use responsibility to smear the character of the defendant is risky as fuck.

As if this all wasn’t offensive enough, the CPS decided to inject a bit of sexism into the case–no mean feat, considering the defendant was a gay man and all of the porn in question was gay porn. For some reason, though, they felt it appropriate to ask a female expert witness if fisting would be more degrading if it involved a woman, and they didn’t much like the answer she gave:

CPS – Dr Smith would not concede images were degrading if it pictured a woman. This is clearly wrong.

Thanks for the paternalism, CPS! Also, apparently it’s selfish and untrue to say that it isn’t degrading:

CPS – Dr Smith’s evidence was disingenuous, self-serving and dishonest.

That clears that up, then.

The case lays bare the societal prejudices against non-mainstream sexual preferences. None of the porn depicted anything non-consensual, and everything is perfectly legal to try in your own bedroom, even if you have invited a lot of people along to watch. After watching all this porn, the jury rightly concluded that no crime had been committed.

It’s surprising that in 2012, the law still has a fascination with trying to restrict perfectly consensual sex and fantasies. The prosecution’s case rested entirely on dated ideologies and stigmatisation of kink, and I’m glad the jury saw right through it.

It made no sense to prosecute this in the first place, in a case which seemed doomed to fail from the start. I can think of three possible reasons why it happened. Only two of them are kinky.

  1. The CPS has a fetish for showing juries fisting porn.
  2. The CPS likes to be humiliated, and is pushing ever harder at boundaries with ever more ridiculous cases.
  3. The CPS have the backs of the police and helped them in their quest for revenge.

I hope it’s the first or the second reason, as in this case, we can work together to help the CPS safely play out its fantasies by finding them some playmates with a thing for being consensually maliciously prosecuted. Sadly, though, the third option seems most likely. The defendant pissed off the state, and the state decided to punish him. Despite the not guilty verdict, the defendant has lost his job and his privacy has been thoroughly violated, with vanilla society knowing about his kinks and judging him for them.

It’s a grotesque abuse of a law that shouldn’t exist in the first place, allowing prejudice to be catalysed into a spiteful smear campaign.

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I’m no lawyer, so if you want more information and analysis on the legal background to the case, these posts from ObscenityLawyer, NoMoreLost and David Allen Green are good sources, and here’s a good write-up of the verdict from NoMoreLost.

How the police enforce rape culture

Trigger warning: This post discusses rape, rape culture and abuse of power

The police, as we know, have a horrible track record regarding rape. Allegations are often not taken seriously and, in some situations, the police actively fabricate paperwork to make cases go away. It is hardly a surprise that the vast majority of rapes go unreported.

The women who have been let down by the police after finding the courage to report their rapes know this best, and three of them are suing the Met for the terrible treatment they received. Two claimants were attacked by serial rapist John Worboys, who might have been caught earlier had the police listened to the women.

The police didn’t listen. In fact, the opposite was true:

“It rings in my ears, the officer saying ‘a black cab driver just wouldn’t do it’,” she [a survivor] said.

“It felt like they didn’t want to know. In my dreams I’m screaming ‘why won’t you believe me?’.”

My heart goes out to this woman. The crushing dismissal of her report, after such a horrifying violation has happened.

The behaviour of the police here is one of the more overt manifestations of rape culture: not believing the survivor. Maybe the officer acted in good faith, not meaning to maliciously throw out a rape case (as some have). Maybe the officer had just absorbed a few stock phrases and attitude from rape culture.

It doesn’t make a difference. The police have a unique position of power: ultimately, they get to decide if they can be bothered to help a rape survivor. Every moment of following rape culture logic is failing the survivor who asked for their aid. Every piss-poor half-arsed investigation is failing the survivor who has asked for their aid. Every fraudulent document throwing out the case is failing the survivor who asked for their aid. These survivors have chosen to pursue a certain course of action, actively engaging with the state to ask for its aid.

And they are being failed.

Who benefits from this arrangement? Rapists. Each time this happens, things get a little easier for rapists. They know they can get away with it. They know that the odds are in their favour because the state will help them out.

Rape culture only ever benefits rapists, and the police are using their power to reinforce it.

Between 2008 and 2012, there have been 56 documented cases of rape, sexual assault and harassment. In many of these cases, the complaints have been covered up and the survivor disbelieved. In a frighteningly large number of the cases, no criminal charges were ever brought. It is hardly surprising, then, that the police have a vested interest in keeping rape culture in roaringly good health: they are benefiting from it.

I am wholly critical of the notion that the power the police have could ever be used for good, to help overturn rape culture from the top down. At best, police can only be as progressive as the society that spawned them, so they will still be steeped in rape culture. This is without factoring in the psychological effects that turn all coppers into bastards.

There is vast room for improvement before the revolution, though. They can, quite easily, stop so actively reinforcing rape culture by starting from a position of always believing the survivor, even when it’s their mate who stands accused. They can, quite easily, actually bother investigating rape cases properly, respecting the courage of the survivor to come forward. Improvements are possible. I wish I could be less pessimistic about the police force’s will to try.