Anne Ramsay wanted to be a police officer all her life. Despite progressing quickly through the ranks, she couldn’t defeat the bullying culture of the “biggest gang in the world”. She tells The Firm that the organisation is now so out of control that it may no longer be fit for purpose, and hopes to inspire change by example.

The farcical inquest into the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes by London’s armed police neatly illustrates why the current model of policing has failed.

“There is an increasing suspicion of the police among the public and the sense that they are not truly accountable is growing. The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the disgraceful behaviour of the police in its wake have merely alienated us further from those who are charged with upholding our safety,” The Independent wrote in its leader.  The decision to deny the jury the right to deliver an unlawful killing verdict demonstrates that police have become justifiably accustomed to acting beyond all possibility of restraint.

It is no better right here in Scotland. In Edinburgh in December, Lothian and Borders Police officers lied in their reports and lied under oath in the Sheriff Court, claiming two men -millionaire businessmen as it turned out- had failed to give their names to officers, and assaulted a WPC when police were called to their housewarming party. The police are now likely to be sued after the businessmen were vindicated by video evidence produced in court. Police culture must surely be damaged beyond repair if officers have confidence to act with such disregard for the public or the truth, without fear of consequence or rebuke.

“There can be more integrity from criminals than the police, because criminals are not hiding what they are. The police hide behind the uniform, and paint themselves to be whiter than white and above the law. There are a lot of double standards. There are some good guys, but unfortunately in my experience it is a minority. If no one is going to speak out, and if no one is going to acknowledge there is a problem, there will never be a change. It is a culture within the organisation. They get away with it because no one speaks out,” says Anne Ramsay. And she should know.  She was a Strathclyde Police officer for fourteen years.

Anne’s “survival” in the police has been documented in her self penned memoir in which she narrates her trajectory all the way from raw and eager cadet to plainclothes investigator training for the CID. She is candid about her own absorption and brainwashing into the culture, which saw her adopt the arrogance and unimpeachability of the force mentality. Her eyes were opened partly by her family, who lamented at the destruction of her sunny attitude and increased negativity, and her own experience of having the machine turned against her. Her memoir has been discussed at top level within Strathclyde Police, as well informally amongst former colleagues, new recruits and long serving officers, many of whom have contacted her to express support, offer testimony and vindicate her publication of her experiences. Starthclyde Police has, with interesting coincidental timing, recently initiated public relations exercises to promote their policy of gender equality.

“There have been a couple of articles since then in which Strathclyde Police have paraded senior female officers who said they have never seen anything like I have experienced. There was also a damage limitation article in the Herald, in which they said they had a woman’s forum set up. So everything looks rosy in the garden. They are going the opposite way and putting the wall up,” says Anne. “Whiter than white again.”

Despite her bruising experience, Ramsay is sprightly and full of easy cheer. Quick to laugh and evidently relaxed and comfortable with herself. She has come a long way from having been almost psychologically broken by the vampiric embrace of the police culture that made her a stranger even to herself.

“I could never have done this when I was straight out. I lost myself. I really struggled,” she says.

“Being a police officer was totally my identity. I could hardly read a book then, never mind write one. I feel I have got myself back, and tried to take the positives out of the skills I picked up. I let it affect me enough, and I’m not willing to let it affect me any more. The brainwashing I tried to describe, I only realised had taken place after I was out and had taken a step away. It is extremely hard to see when you are in it. That is why it is interesting that people reading the book  -senior officers- are questioning themselves.”

Ramsay’s journey through the police ranks provides a fascinating insight into the failings of the organisation from root to branch, ranging from fellow officers’ tolerance of drunkenness and incompetence, to direct bullying and intimidation and corruption. Ramsay was demonstrably a good officer, progressing swiftly though the ranks and demonstrating aptitude and talent. Those qualities that are of benefit both to the force and the public whom it is intended to serve, are, as Ramsay demonstrates in her memoir, driven out of candidates through a perverted culture of posturing and bullying which quickly embraces those who adopt it, and repels those who aspire to better.

“You’ll put up and shut up to a certain degree. You don’t want to stand out when you are learning,” Ramsay says of her first experience of the culture whilst training at Tulliallan.

“Even listening to police officers speaking to the public on the streets there is an arrogance, and it doesn’t matter who they are talking to. They talk as though they have power over them and they can get away with whatever they like. That definitely still goes on. It has happened to me off duty.”

“You aren’t promoted on the merit of being a good thief catcher or good at your job. There is a lot of nepotism. Or do you go to the same Masonic lodge, or play golf with the superintendent?  The guys that are classed as good at doing their job actually don’t get on that much. It was the other way around.”

Such a culture cannot exist accidentally. Its perpetuation can only be the result of willing collusion and tolerance from those with the power to create and maintain it. Ramsay’s mirror held up to the force for 14 long years proves that the behaviour she experienced is chronic, endemic and actively condoned by officers from the bottom to the top, who have learned from experience that they are beyond criticism and reproach. As the De Menezes disaster shows, a man can be gunned down in a city street in broad daylight by officers who were literally taking the piss during the operation, (the officer closest to his flat was relieving himself as de Menezes left the property) and yet no question of illegality can be brought to bear, despite international outrage and widespread scrutiny.

For anything to even begin to be done to rectify this situation, and return the police to proxies enforcing law at our behest and not at their own, an admission of the failures would need to be forthcoming, from the lowest level all the way to the top. Although this still seems far from likely.

“The bigger thing to do is for someone to take some responsibility. The police will never take that responsibility,” Ramsay says.

“The first thing they do if you go against them is that they investigate you, even if you have been badly assaulted by a superior officer. They’ll investigate you. It becomes bigger than the individual. They want to protect the organisation.”

Despite being out of the force now, Ramsay still believes the police have it not only in their power, but in their will following the publication of her expose, to traduce her or cause her to suffer some harm or incident, such is her knowledge of their tactics. More positively, she has also been contacted by serving members and strangers who have praised her for highlighting a problem they dare not mention for fear of reprisal.

“A lot of the emails I have received have been from men who have experienced bullying, racism or sectarianism. One said he was the ‘Token Tim’ on the shift when he joined. These are people I don’t know, saying the same things. They can’t speak out, but have done so to me,” she says.

She was even contacted by a relative of a rape victim, who had felt so mistreated by the police handling the incident that she approached Anne rather than the force, the Police Complaints Commission or even Parliament.

“They felt they had nowhere to turn, and wrote to me because they felt they had been mistreated by the police. This was a professional person, and the crime didn’t even happen to them, but to a member of their family. It was quite disturbing for me to find that they felt they had nowhere to turn in the current police. They had felt quite bullied, reporting a very serious crime. You would expect a certain amount of empathy and understanding, but for that person to feel bullied is quite wrong.”

Anne’s book has  -she has learned- become well read within police circles, and may over time have a wider impact than she anticipated when deciding to tell her story, encouraging others with similar experiences to begin to step forward from behind the uniform, and initiate that change that is required from within.

“I have been told from people in the job just now that it is raising discussion and people are speaking out more. It is too late for me, but I would like to think it would help to change the police force. Not so much for the morale in the job, but it is going to be better for the public, who should feel less threatened and less bullied. I actually truly believe that until they acknowledge the culture, it isn’t going to change.”

If the police culture has become larger than the ideals that initially inspired its creation, and become an organisation with its own personality that beats the decent qualities out of those who do not conform, surely it is failing in its most basic purpose, which is to serve us, on our behalf and with our consent. Initiatives like December’s Single Equality initiative from the Grampian Police -which involved an online questionnaire whose promotion included publicity cards- do nothing to influence a culture whose norms are rooted in the hiring, training, promotion and cultivated conduct that is not only promulgated and tolerated, but actively defended against when challenged.

The Independent newspaper said “as our politicians are fond of telling us, we are policed by consent in this country. Yet that consent has been stretched dangerously thin in recent years.” It has evidently become degraded and corrupted beyond recognition from its ideals. One wonders what it is about this organisation that those within it seem so keen to protect and preserve. If the force is simply no longer fit for purpose nor worth preserving, and fails to perform its basic function as authorised law enforcement surrogates of the citizenry, then it ought to be torn down to its last brick and badge, and replaced with something that works.