West Yorkshire’s head of policing and crime has admitted that the streets are “less safe for women than they ever have been” in the multicultural English region.
Alison Lowe, who was appointed Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) in West Yorkshire in June, told Leeds City Council that “it feels less safe for women and girls than it ever has and, let’s be honest, it has never felt safe for women and girls.”
“As someone with experience of childhood sexual abuse and domestic abuse, I can attest to the fact life has never been safe for women and girls,” she said in a speech reported by the Telegraph and Argus.
“I am not an academic and I cannot tell you the reasons for that, but it just feels as though more predators feel safe to act out their worst behaviours. I think misogyny is at the heart of that – I think those misogynistic behaviours have been given permission by society,” she suggested.
“The impact is that there are more serious violent and sexual assaults against women and girls – probably against men as well. Victims are increasing across all harm areas.”
Lowe is previously best known for having led a Black Lives Matter-inspired memorial review in Leeds which complained that the city’s statues “over-celebrated Empire, Christianity and ‘great’ white men”, and seemed irritated that fewer than 10 per cent of residents wanted any change.
The DMPC went on to emphasise in her speech this week the phenomenon of “hate crime” and “emerging things, such as incels” — involuntary celibates — in her appraisal of the situation for women and girls in West Yorkshire — but did not mention the mostly Muslim, South Asian origin grooming and rape gangs which have plagued the region’s cities in recent years.
The abuse, pimping, and trafficking of mostly white women and girls by grooming gangs went on largely unchallenged by law enforcement for decades. Prosecutions for historic offences have now been belatedly undertaken, with dozens arrested in multiple locations — although whistleblowers say a large amount of abuse is still taking place and victims are still being “fobbed off by the authorities”.
West Yorkshire Police, which was criticised for its failures on rape gangs following reviews of the scandal — which did not actually result in punishment for anyone in positions of authority — are notoriously prickly about the public questioning their effectiveness, threatening to prosecute Facebook users who mocked them for bragging about seizing an incredibly small quantity of cannabis under the Malicious Communications Act, for example.