police

Marie

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I was on the bus to work a few months back when an argument erupted between the (female) bus driver and a (female) passenger due to the driver asking the passenger to move her mini-suitcase which was blocking the aisle. The passenger refused and started shouting abuse at the driver, using disgusting language. It got to the point where the driver stopped the bus and asked her to get off but she refused and continued to give a torrent of abuse so the driver called the police. We were waiting for the police to arrive and several passengers started talking to the passenger, asking her to apologise to the driver and saying that they were “just as bad as each other”. Eventually another bus pulled up behind us and as we got onto it the (male) bus driver said “oh she should have just ignored her and got on with her job”. Now I was annoyed as everybody else about the interruption to my journey but I completely supported the actions that the driver took. At the end of the day the driver shouldn’t have to put up with that level of abuse from a passenger while she is simply doing her job. Her colleague should have supported her, not told her to “get on with it”, likewise the other passengers should have been more sympathetic instead of getting annoyed that their journey was delayed. It shocks me how this abuse of a woman simply doing her job was normalised, the other passengers and the male bus driver seemed to think that she should just put up with the abuse and get on with it. I have worked in customer service before, and I would not have put up with that level of abuse. I’m now a criminal prosecutor and know that she had every right to call the police. It makes me wonder what would have happened had the passenger and driver been of different genders? If the abusive passenger had been a man would the same approach have been taken? Similarly if the driver had been a man I reckon the second driver would probably have backed him up, not said he should just “get on with it”.

Just Doing My Job

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Part of my financial aid for university allowed me to work at a library on my college campus. I got the job as soon as I enrolled and within five a weeks a young man came up to my desk and informed me that he had seen me there several times and wanted to talk to me. I think, okay not too bad, but now that I knew he was there, I start seeing him stare at me from across the building. He wouldn’t say anything, just stare until he came up to me and then he’d compliment whatever necklace or shirt I had on, but he wouldn’t be looking at my accessories. Then he started to appear outside my gym whenever I’d finished exercising or follow me into restaurants. I told myself it was a small college town, this was bound to happen, even as he started appearing outside my classes, pacing back and forth in the hallways. My coworkers and boss started to notice he would come up to my desk and stand over it, staring down my shirt and mumbling to himself. They started to find things for me to do to stay away from him, but they asked that I report it and I thought he was just a harmless, unusual creepy, individual, perhaps with some sort of social disability or anxiety. The stress was piling up, I started taking self defense lessons, but seeing him everywhere staring and following me was eating away at my mental health. I started having nightmares, didn’t want to leave my room and was physically ill. The day I finally reported him he followed me back to my building in nearly a full tilt run, thankfully I had a friend with me who called the police, but the police told me there was nothing they could do other than if I called them when he was ogling me at work, they could tell him to stop staring. It was only after I called my father in tears, who when he called the police only then did they agree to make an incident report of him following me home. My boss and I filed the paperwork for a no contact order the next day, but it only keeps him twenty feet away from me, and he can still stare at me from across the room at work so long as he initiates no contact when I’m just trying to do my job. I keep up with my martial arts and I keep working, but I can’t wait to graduate and get away from him.

Niramisa

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I was giving the police a video interview about historical serious sex abuse. A male officer was asking the questions and a young woman PC was dealing with the filming technology. It was 2006. North London. When we finished and I was preparing to leave the older higjer-ranking male made a number of sexist remarks to the younger officer such as ” you’re better off in the kitchen where women belong”. She just smiled and said nothing. It was so incongruous and inappropriate, it was impossible to know how to deal with it but it was never forgotten.

Anon

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I was 18, working at a festival selling food. A mid 40’s, male, ‘youth liaison’ police officer, with roughly seven of his peers ordered food. Whilst I was making his meal he came up to me and handed me his card, he had written his number on the back. “What are you doing after work, can I drive you home?” I looked up at him shocked, then one of his peers, also a police officer chimed in “his car is nice and spacious if you know what I mean” and winked, to which all seven of them started laughing. I was so horrified about being ganged up on by several police officers making sexually explicit comments that I mumbled something about having my own car and it being ‘plenty big enough’. When they left I found out that the one who gave me his number had asked my boss if I was ‘a legal age’ before he approached me. My boss did nothing to support me in this situation but laughed the encounter off. I didn’t know I had a right to report this sort of behavior at the time, I was quite young and needed someone to tell me that sort of behavior wasn’t okay. I wish I could go back and confront or report this man now.

Zoe

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When I was about 11 or 12, I was walking back to the car with my mom from the grocery store. I was walking a little behind her, and was wearing a sweatshirt with jeans. A guy walking past us in the opposite direction slapped my ass as he walked by. I was so shocked I didn’t do anything. My mom saw out of the corner of her eye. She turned around and started screaming at him and he ran off. A man at a sports bar next to the store saw everything and chased the guy, tackling him to the ground. Someone else called the cops. The cops interviewed me. I was still in shock, and just wanted it all to go away. I acted like it was no big deal. I have always repressed that memory and tried to pretend like it doesn’t bother me. To my knowledge there were never any charges pressed and the man was not punished at all for doing what he did to a minor, however small of an action it was, it scarred me. Adult men in my life now still make comments about my butt and it makes me so uncomfortable. I am trying to learn how to speak up for myself and tell them to stop, but I am scared because I know they will just belittle me and not listen to me. As a woman, I feel helpless against men. I want to change this. I don’t want women to constantly live in fear.

Anon

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Below is the account of something so remarkably inappropriate that happened to me with a PCSO police officer, that I have pasted the email I sent to his superior officer: Dear Sergeant, I’m writing regarding an upsetting incident which took place this morning with one of your PCSO officers. The PCSO knocked on my door, to which I answered in my pyjamas and hoodie as I could see it was a member of the constabulary, who would most likely be looking for information regarding a burglary which happened in the neighbourhood. When I answered the door, the first thing the PCSO said to me was ‘Hello good looking’. Firstly, that is extremely inappropriate, regardless of my age as a woman. Secondly, it is important to clarify that I am a 23-year-old young woman in her own house and in her pyjamas. I was incredibly shocked and upset to be greeted this way by a police officer. I told the officer ‘That’s an incredibly unprofessional thing to say – particularly to a young woman’. He responded that he addressed me that way to relax me. My dad also came to the door and said he did not appreciate him speaking to me in that way – a way which is not only incredibly sexist but left me feeling very uncomfortable and upset. The response to your PCSO from this was absolutely unfathomable. He said ‘I’m sorry, I thought she was a child’. To which my dad replied “That’s even worse that you would address someone you thought was a child, in that way, on her own, in her pyjamas.” I am seriously shocked by this incident and while the PCSO apologised, it is absolutely not on and I would feel incredibly uncomfortable speaking to the officer again. He is clearly in need of some serious re-training, particularly regarding chatting up girls he thinks are minors in their pyjamas. Yours disappointedly, Anon