THE CHAIR ASKS
aren’t commissioned services to support victims, that those are put in place. Policing has its part and needs to support victims and to be sure that the focus is on the perpetrators, but we know there’s a part for other organisations to play too. The message is please report it because we will treat this as a priority.
It is crucial that it’s not just policing that has a part to play, it’s the wider system that supports everybody - the criminal justice system, the amazing work that the third sector charities do to help support victims. What are the plans and the things that we can look forward to in the next 12 months?
the right thing, and people calling this out are doing the right thing.
The other part of what you can expect
to see over the next year is more work on being an upstander and having the right culture and the right standards within policing. As policing responds to the work on vetting and misconduct, we will make sure that that includes an approach to tackling misogyny, sexism, and sexualised behaviour at work. There’s already some
need to do. Also at the heart of this is leadership.
“We accepted, and this was largely driven by the absolutely tragic death of Sarah Everard, that the trust and confidence of much of the public towards us in policing was really broken”
Violence against women and girls is going to remain a priority for policing, and we’re confident that this is being placed as a strategic requirement, focusing on it like we do with counter-terrorism, and serious and organised crime. We’re putting together our
performance across all 43 forces, so that we can look at where there is good practice that can be shared. We think that there is a place for specialist training for those officers and staff who work in public protection departments or in a specialist role. We want to make sure that they’ve got the right training and support because it’s hard working in that area. There are two things probably at the end of the day that we’ll keep our focus on. One is domestic abuse because that is volume crime. Policing has its part, but we can’t arrest our way out of violence against women and girls. We can do our bit, but we need to make sure those other support services are there.
The second is continuing to look at what we call police perpetrated VAWG. Where do we need to improve the services for victims who report this crime, where it’s perpetrated by police officers themselves? We want to make sure that those victims coming forward are properly supported by our internal structures, to know that when they come forward will be believed and receive the same support that staff associations like yours give to anyone who’s on the end of those complaints and allegations. We will continue to shine a light on this.
We will expect to see more cases coming forward that, quite frankly, are shocking and that is hard to see. But we are doing
20 | POLICE | DECEMBER 2022
good projects and initiatives happening from some forces that we will try to standardise across all 43 forces.
We had the recent HMICFRS report which was, I hope, seen as a watershed moment and that it will galvanise people to do more to call out inappropriate actions by anybody with prejudiced behaviour. It leads me to my final question: what can we, as the Federation, do to support the work that you and your teams are doing? From my part, working with staff associations and working with the Federation is at the heart of what we
Leadership across our workforce, chief officers, senior leaders, and the leaders themselves within the frontline. We know that some of the standards’ issues that we’ve seen are affecting all ranks and all parts of the organisation, so we do need to do this together. Your support as the Federation really helps give that coordinated, consistent approach. I think working together in the way that we are doing is giving a clear message to those victims who have been courageous enough to come forward and tell the story of
what’s been happening to them. My huge thanks goes out to them because it’s very brave to do that. We want to say that we are here to support you. At the end of the day, we are talking about changing a culture. We’re talking about reform, and we shouldn’t be scared to say that. And that takes effort and leadership across the whole of our service. Leadership isn’t just about the people at
the top, it’s about all of us as leaders in all our different roles, feeling brave enough to stand up and have a set of standards that we all want for policing. We have a duty and responsibility to be the best, and I really believe that we can be.
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