Crime tsar’s refusal to resign over Sarah Everard murder is mockery of justice – The Yorkshire Post says

THAT Phliip Allott still refuses to resign as North Yorkshire’s Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner a week after making misogynistic remarks about Sarah Everard’s murder by a police officer, and his view that women should be more “streetwise”, makes today’s intervention by his Tory predecessor Julia Mulligan even more prescient.
Philip Allott is under mounting pressure to resign as North Yorkshire's Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner.Philip Allott is under mounting pressure to resign as North Yorkshire's Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner.
Philip Allott is under mounting pressure to resign as North Yorkshire's Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner.

She knows, from traumatic personal experience, what it is like to be a teenage victim of rape. She also appreciates, after nine years as commissioner in one of the first police forces to decree misogyny as a hate crime, that leaders must be respected by all.

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Julia Mulligan is North Yorkshire's former police and crime commissioner.Julia Mulligan is North Yorkshire's former police and crime commissioner.
Julia Mulligan is North Yorkshire's former police and crime commissioner.

And, today, she speaks for the whole county by asking this fundamental question about Mr Allott and the now irreconcilable breakdown of trust: “How can women and girls across North Yorkshire ever believe him, when he may actually be thinking something very different?”

A profound point, the fact it is now being posed shows how both Mr Allott and Carl Les, the chair of the North Yorkshire Crime Panel, appear to be in denial after decreeing that next week’s meeting, where the £74,000 a year Commissioner will have to explain his “repugnant” views, is to be staged ‘virtually’ with online questions from the public limited by time.

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The murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer continues to prompt much national soul-searching.The murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer continues to prompt much national soul-searching.
The murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer continues to prompt much national soul-searching.

Yet their arrogant belief that this controversy will soon pass under-estimates the level of anger and is as contemptible as Mr Allott’s original remarks, hence why Ms Mulligan deserves credit for putting principles before party by writing that “taking refuge behind a screen is cheap, cowardly, and hardly shows a willingness to reflect and learn”.

Given this, it is even more reason for Parliament to update its ‘recall’ laws so electors can have the power to vote out errant crime commissioners, in addition to MPs, and end this mockery of justice and values where Mr Allott can sack North Yorkshire’s chief constable if he so chooses while he, himself, remains answerable and accountable – to precisely no one.

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