The battle of women vs the police claims another victim.
After nearly a month of desperate searching for Nicola Bulley, police announced on 21 February her body has been found less than a mile from where the mother of two was last seen. Her disappearance has perplexed the nation and police force alike since 27 January, after The BBC reported that Ms Bulley had left her car in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, to walk family dog, Willow, along the river, while passing fellow familiar dog walkers en route. It is known that Ms Bulley also joined a Teams call while on the walk; however, her phone was then found 25 minutes after joining the call, along with Willow’s harness and lead, with that being her last known movements.
With what should have been a collaborative effort of searching and now a general consensus of peace between police and public, has once again resulted in an unnerving confrontation of unsettling police speculation and major public backlash which is sure to have left tensions high and detectives with their tails between their legs.
While police will be brandishing the discovery a success after declaring at the start of the search their ‘hypothesis’ of Ms Bulley being located in the river, despite Ms Bulley’s sister publicly condemning them, stating how there was ‘no evidence whatsoever’ behind this hypothesis, the public will be recalling statements made about Ms Bulley at the beginning of the investigation.
Once declared a missing person, Ms Bulley was deemed ‘high risk’ due to what Lancashire Constabulary considered ‘significant issues with alcohol’ which were brought on by her ‘ongoing struggles with menopause’, causing uproar amongst the public for instigating the stereotype of women existing as hormonal beings, led by their crazy and unstable emotions. Women’s Equality Party leader, Mandu Reid, exclaimed to The Independent of how in no world would ‘a man’s low sperm count or something to do with his reproductive health’ ever be used against him to account for his disappearance, which therefore triggers a sense of victim blaming, a story all too common within the myriad of disillusioned cases involving women and the police force. This comes as another example of how the male dominated police sector are weaponizing the female body in order to malleableize information in their favour, rather than seeing its damaging effects in their entirety.
Parallels can be drawn with the aftermath of the murder of Sarah Everard, raped and killed at the hands of a serving police officer and the tone-deaf advice to ‘flag down a bus’ by ex-Scotland Yard chief, Dame Cressida Dick, if you are a young woman stopped by a lone police officer. This caused extreme backlash at the thought of the repercussions women would be met with if resisting arrest, instigating the discussion between Femicide Census co-founder, Karen Ingala Smith, stating how ‘this is not the problem of a few ‘bad’uns’ but systematic and institutional sexism’. With the disconcerting multitude of evidence validating what is already engrained within piling up, from suppressive, derogatory comments made in statements to save face, to brutal, gender provoked killings carried out by the ones meant to protect, the environment has become one of distrust beyond any other caliber, reinforcing just how truly discordant the police are with women.
The handling of Nicola Bulley’s case also provokes discouraging uncertainties for the inevitable cases of women that will follow. The sensitive nature of information Ms Bulley’s family released was intended for detectives only, to aid the formulation of possible last movements; however, it was used against her in a malicious act of police preservation, which could consequently lead to future families withholding vital information in order to protect their loved one’s dignity. This is evidently another out of sync step taken by the force in this messy tango of police mistrust that continues to fail women on a daily basis, it just now leaves the question of how many more of these steps will be taken?