This is the snarling face of the police that women like me fear

In the past four years, since my arrest at the Sarah Everard vigil, I have often been asked whether policing has changed for the better. People question whether there has been any real effort to eradicate the misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia and so on. My answer is always no.

A BBC Panorama documentary this week showed why. It revealed reprehensible behaviour at Charing Cross police station uncovered during a seven-month undercover investigation. The documentary captures one PC saying about a detainee who had overstayed his visa: “F***ing either put a bullet through his head or deport him.” Policing attracts those who want to abuse power. As one officer bluntly admits in the documentary, “I like to scrap, and that’s why I joined the force”.

In a separate incident, when a female colleague questioned the decision to release a man accused of raping his girlfriend on bail and pointed out that the accused had also allegedly kicked the pregnant woman in the stomach, another officer with nearly 20 years’ service in the Met, replies: “That’s what she says.” This is the reality of how women are treated in the UK, a country where one woman is killed on average every three days – a reality that is met with dismissal, disbelief and cruel jokes.

And so we all agree – once again – that something is rotten within the police forces that are meant to protect us. And so we all agree – once again – that something must now be done. The reality is that the police are only ever held to account when there is extreme – and short-lived – public pressure and media scrutiny. It takes an establishment to upbraid an establishment, apparently.

It shouldn’t take the state broadcaster to tell you what we have been telling you for decades. Survivors of police brutality, campaigners and communities that have been targeted have been shouting, writing, protesting and trying to get people to see the reality that others refuse to confront. Women and marginalised groups have been saying exactly what Panorama has shown this week, campaigning tirelessly for change, without being listened to. Most of the time their experiences are dismissed as exaggeration or treated like isolated incidents from “a few bad apples” – rather than what they are: a wider culture that is rotten to the core.

This dynamic is exhausting. It reinforces the pervading sense that power is not in our hands or even ours to challenge, that we are not credible witnesses to the abuse that we face. Even when the spotlight does highlight corruption, justice doesn’t follow. I have been told a story where a woman allegedly had her leg torn apart by a police dog, set upon by an officer while standing at a protest. I’ve seen footage of someone I know being assaulted at a station. We tell each other these stories knowing that too often we are the only ones who will listen.

These kinds of stories are not rare, they are everywhere. We should not accept that violence is simply “part of the job” for police. The system is broken and only a complete overhaul will change the way that corruption infects and pullulates within the force. Police should listen to activists, and actually work to change and hold officers to account, instead of giving empty promises yet again. Words, too often, mean nothing.