Police Priorities

By S

Last year I was both a victim and a perpetrator of crime. This is a tale of how the police dealt with me, one blonde woman in two roles. As you can imagine the treatment was very different, the only similarity was the indifference with which I was treated in both instances. 

Women and the police have been in the news a lot lately which has forced me to consider my personal experiences with them. I have always felt the police to be a fascist institution who police only the poor, the rich as we so often see are served a form of justice us peasants only get to smell. Justice is for them, not for us. We should just be grateful if they answer the phone when we've been robbed. Or assaulted.

So let me tell you about my own very recent experience as a victim of sexual assault. Now like most women I have been assaulted before in a variety of ways but this time I chose to call the police. I did this because it happened in a pub, in front of people, there were witnesses and cctv and the assailant was so quick and so targeted in his penetration of me that phoning the non emergency 101 number seemed like it was my civic responsibility. If this man did this to me, here, in public then what else is he doing elsewhere, in private. 

I was treated with some compassion by the female officer on the phone when I initially reported it and felt encouraged.  I had done the right thing coming forward she said.  The police were spotted investigating the incident in the venue, 3 male officers attended to collect the CCTV, we had the name of the perpetrator and it felt like this local man would soon be apprehended. He was known to the police after all and had some record apparently. Open and Shut case it seemed.

Then covid happened, I received an email from Sussex police saying that they were very busy due to the unprecedented demand on their time due to the global pandemic, would I mind if they shelved the case. I gave this some thought, of course I don't want to make a fuss and take away from police investigating real crime. But on the other hand this man was a sexual predator, happy to intrusively enter orifices in crowded places with pinpoint precision. He'd done it before I thought, he'd do it again and maybe to someone with less of a loudmouth than me.

So I emailed back that I felt this was a serial offender and I would prefer if they kept the investigation on going. We did have the mans full name, a photo and witnesses after all. How much investigating did they need to do?

A few days later the phone rang, it was the same female police officer following up on the email exchange and explaining in a very soothing voice how very busy the pandemic had made them, how it would be really helpful if I just dropped this, that of course what happened to me mattered and they would keep this on file so that when he did it again to someone else they could then deal with him and add this instance. So in shock and feeling deflated, I agreed to drop it and tried to move on with my new lockdown life.

Then something else happened, an old friend died, an ex boyfriend in fact. Somebody who had looked after me when my own mother died, who despite the chaos of drug addiction had a good heart, was loyal and kind. He died the day after his 42nd birthday and I will always consider him a victim of the pandemic, although he never caught Covid. Straight away I was by his mums side as the police dealt with a cadaver I'd hoped I'd never see. I was so grateful for the police and I mention this service they provide, during deaths as it is most important and a facility of the police for which I am grateful. They can step in when emotion is overwhelming. I was so impressed with the way the two officers dealt with everything, the compassion that they showed my friends mum, their professionalism that it gave me hope that their existence was more than just to enforce prohibitions and probations in a heavy handed manner.

For anybody, and there are millions of us, that experienced loss and a funeral during a pandemic my heart goes out to you. Social distancing means that families that arrive in the same car must sit a meter apart in the chapel whilst grieving. A very cruel and unnecessary edict that had my nerves screaming throughout the service. But I digress.

The wake was held two streets away from my home, minimally attended due to Covid restrictions but like all wakes there was no shortage of booze. The pandemic stress, the personal stress, the bereavement stress and the red wine combined meant that by 8pm it was time for me to stagger home. So I started the 2 minute walk across the road to my flat with my faithful jack russell dog sticking by my side in the heart breaking way that he does when I'm drunk. 

To be honest I don't have a clear memory of what happened next, there is of course body cam footage but it turns on as I'm walking away from police, then I wheel suddenly round, as if something has been said and I am on the attack. Not the physcial attack you understand or the sexual attack, but the angry woman attack. The Something-has-now-snapped-inside-of-me state that I was in, almost incoherent but definitely fuming meant that I was now sticking both my middle fingers up at the two officers who had told me off. A brighter spark than me might have just ignored them and gone home. But I was angry. And Sad. And Upset. All the injustices came flooding back and combined with the red wine, I became a belligerent arsehole. 

I was shouty, I was red faced, I was right outside my front door. The officers, one female and one male who were just parked up outside my flat decided that I needed arresting. Or perhaps the WPC needed some physicality training so I was thrown to the floor and handcuffed. A neighbour, seeing this happening came out and tried to plead with the officers, explaining where I lived and that I was normally an upstanding member of the community. I told them I was on my way home from a funeral. It didn't matter. They manhandled me in such a way that I was covered in bruises the next day. I was thrown in a cell with no toilet paper or water for the night. My dog was left to roam the streets, unleashed. Whilst locked up all I could think was that he'd been run over. A friend had in fact collected him thanks to my intervening neighbour but police did not tell me this until 10am the next morning. To say I was distressed is an understatement. I was hysterical. I was grieving. I was scared. I felt violated. And perhaps my dog was dead.

To make matters worse the funeral dress I was wearing had a high neck which added to the unbearable claustrophobia which being locked up had severely induced. I had no choice but to take my dress off. So I sat crying on my thin plastic mattress, wearing a bra n thong and an itchy blanket, with Serco employees checking on my crying through the flap. They employed no empathy. I haunts me to think about who may have seen the cctv footage from my cell that night and whilst most likely it's of no interest, occasionally at 3am I remember that the internet is full of perverts and the people in charge of a police station at night are privately contracted caretakers, not even police. The more we learn about inappropriate police and police staff actions, the more I'm more certain my ordeal is out there somewhere for someone to jerk off over.

The next day I received much better treatment by the cohort of officers that came in at 6am and subsequently calmed down. I was given a grey jump suit to cover my modesty, moved to a better cell with loo roll and a nurse was sent down to me as I was so sick. I was interviewed and despite having very little memory was advised by my solicitor to just be remorseful and if so I'd likely get to leave the station with a caution. I wanted to go home so badly. I was sick and hungover, tired and scared, grieving and hurt and covered in bruises. I was also genuinely remorseful, beer guilt had done its job and I was already beating myself up. I apologized, I agreed it was my fault entirely. Throughout my interview I was sick in a cardboard bowl. Neither the interviewing officer nor my solicitor wore a mask but I guess the rules are different for police, perhaps Covid goes limp in police stations just like I did.

I received 3 cautions and was released around 3pm. Approximately 19 hours in total. No further action. Just an overall sense of police priorities and where I fit into them.

So make of this what you will but this is my take away from this experience. The police didn't have time during the pandemic to arrest the man who sexually assaulted me, but they did have time to arrest me for drunk n disorderly in front of my home during that same pandemic and employ many resources to keep me. I also learnt that when you are on the wrong side of the law you have no redeeming qualities and nobody cares what happens to you, your personal crisis is another day at the office for this gang in blue. I believe the two officers that arrested me lied to ensure their arrest was valid, that they took this opportunity to apply their training in the real world on a weak target. I am a blonde haired, fairly petite female in her mid 30's, I own my own home and business, they treated me like I was an animal right outside my front door. I am one of the privileged and lucky ones. FTP