I think many people will only believe it when charges are made and a conviction happens. Without someone being let off with just a fine after some plea to the court.
Honestly, as someone who gets a ridiculous amount of street harassment that probably results in physical touching about 10% of the time, I probably wouldn’t bother to report anything to the police again unless it was a really severe incident.
I have reported stuff before and it’s only led to the police treating me like a nuisance or someone “making a big a deal out of something” and rolling their eyes / being impatient with me. One time, after a man followed me, harassed me, and then grabbed my breasts before running off (while I was walking home from work at like 7pm too), the police just told me that I should try covering my hair up when walking around because “not many girls around here look like you”.
HOWEVER, one of the times I was cat called in quite a vulgar way by a man on a construction site on the street I lived on and had to walk past every day. I thought about it and decided to contact the construction company and let them know what happened. They fired him the same day and even showed me evidence of him being banned from working for them ever again. The site manager called himself to apologize and offered me a tour of the site and a face to face meeting so I could see that it’s not what they’re about as a company. I declined but I still feel like that was actually a more impactful and fast response than anything the police have ever done in regards to this stuff.
2 comments
I think many people will only believe it when charges are made and a conviction happens. Without someone being let off with just a fine after some plea to the court.
Honestly, as someone who gets a ridiculous amount of street harassment that probably results in physical touching about 10% of the time, I probably wouldn’t bother to report anything to the police again unless it was a really severe incident.
I have reported stuff before and it’s only led to the police treating me like a nuisance or someone “making a big a deal out of something” and rolling their eyes / being impatient with me. One time, after a man followed me, harassed me, and then grabbed my breasts before running off (while I was walking home from work at like 7pm too), the police just told me that I should try covering my hair up when walking around because “not many girls around here look like you”.
HOWEVER, one of the times I was cat called in quite a vulgar way by a man on a construction site on the street I lived on and had to walk past every day. I thought about it and decided to contact the construction company and let them know what happened. They fired him the same day and even showed me evidence of him being banned from working for them ever again. The site manager called himself to apologize and offered me a tour of the site and a face to face meeting so I could see that it’s not what they’re about as a company. I declined but I still feel like that was actually a more impactful and fast response than anything the police have ever done in regards to this stuff.