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Plans to protect women by placing plainclothes police officers in nightclubs are strange, scary and “spectacularly miss the point,” activists and charities have said.
The plans were outlined by the government as part of measures it was taking to improve safety and protect women from predatory offenders. Called Project Vigilante, the program can involve officers who attend areas around clubs and bars in plain clothes, along with an increase in police patrols as people leave at closing time.
Bryony Beynon, managing director of the Good Night Out campaign, said the government’s plan was “quite scary” and that it “feels like an increase in police intrusion into social spaces.”
Other steps released by Downing Street include doubling to 45 million pounds from the Safer Streets fund, which provides measures for the neighborhood, such as better lighting and CCTV.
“It feels like a true dispersal approach, which certainly seems like an attempt to distract from the legitimate criticism of the past week, particularly that kind of police response on Saturday,” Beynon said, referring to the surveillance of a memorial vigil for Sarah. . Everard on Clapham Common in London at the weekend.
He added that given what was known about how predators operated in licensed facilities, one of the best ways to challenge them was when those under attack felt “safe and able to name what is happening” and then felt empowered to contact for support.
“The idea that undercover or plainclothes officers are somehow going to be a source of support seems like very strange logic,” he said.
Downing Street also said ministers were committed to working with law enforcement and police and crime commissioners to ensure that measures were more focused on preventing sexual violence. Boris Johnson said it could mean location measures in parks and routes used by women on their walks home.
But Labor MP Stella Creasy said that while she would not oppose the plans, and any improvements in street lighting would be welcome, they largely missed the point.
“Sarah Everard was not partying, so the idea that putting plainclothes policemen in nightclubs is going to solve this problem does not recognize that women are abused, assaulted and intimidated in all kinds of places,” she told BBC Radio 4. Today’s program on Tuesday.
“Ask the women who have recently gone for a run in broad daylight in their parks about their experiences and you will realize the scale of the challenge. And what strikes me is that 80% of women report having been sexually harassed in public spaces but, in those surveys, 90% of them say that they never report it because they do not believe that anything will change. “
He called for misogyny to become a hate crime “so that existing crimes like sexual harassment, abuse and intimidation can be reported and recorded as such, so that we can build patterns of where the problems lie to help the police. with the way they investigate these issues ”.
Student groups campaigning against gender-based violence share similar concerns to the plans.
It Happens Here was formed in 2012 by a group of students at Oxford, with the aim of addressing sexual violence in a university setting. Since the group was established, others have trained at universities, including Newcastle and Coventry.
Alessandra Peters, policy officer at It Happens Here Oxford, said the general feeling was that plainclothes officers “do not deter harassment and assault.”
Instead, she said the things that were beneficial were “nightclubs with CCTV in all areas, offering drink caps to help prevent drink spikes and public transportation infrastructure that will help women get home safely, ”he said. “That’s not even thinking about more cultural changes that need to happen.”
Professor Zara Quigg, an academic at Liverpool John Moores University whose research includes sexual violence and nightlife health, said that while any effort to improve nightlife safety was welcome, these measures “don’t really address the underlying causes of sexual violence “.
“They don’t consider that most women regularly experience sexual violence in nightlife, mainly from other male nightlife users,” she said, “so it’s not just predatory individuals who can frequent the economy. to deliberately implement sexual violence – in fact, there is a broader societal problem that sexual violence is often the norm in the nighttime economy ”.
A spokeswoman for the Center for Women’s Justice said the plans were strange, especially at a time when “women’s faith in the police has been so damaged by recent events.”
They said: “Many women will now rightly ask themselves: ‘But who will protect me from the officer in plain clothes?’ Undercover police have recently been exposed as an opportunity for police officers to abuse their cover by making inappropriate sexual contact with women. This initiative needs much more informed consideration. “
