As reports of hideous violence by serving Metropolitan Police officers such as David Carrick unravel the legitimacy of British policing as a whole, policymakers and the public are grasping for solutions. The most misguided among them is the suggestion that the presence of more women officers could reduce violence in the police.
This idea is underpinned by two assumptions. First, that violence within policing is the fault of individual male officers, as opposed to the very design of policing itself. Second, that women, who in the general population are statistically less violent, will not use violence when working as police. Both assumptions are incorrect.
Women officers perpetrate grim violence. Two women police officers cut the clothes from, strip-searched and humiliated Koshka Duff, leaving her with physical injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Four women police officers strip-searched the 15-year-old Black schoolgirl known as Child Q, knowing she was on her period. Strip-searches, a form of state-sanctioned sexual assault, are no less traumatising when conducted by women.
