The police, after all, are often seen as protectors of public safety. When the international Black Lives Matter movement has led to calls to defund or even abolish the police, opponents are quick to cite women’s safety from rape and assault as a reason the police must be preserved. Women’s safety and freedom, they argue, can come only from much deeper social changes — and any policy change in response to Ms. Everard’s death should focus on those. For many women in Britain, Ms. Everard’s killing and the police’s violent dispersal of a London vigil in her memory have triggered a similar horror, on a less dystopian scale, about how unprotected they truly are. It has become a moment, too, to reflect on the suffering of women of color, and other groups targeted for abuse, that has long been ignored.

Source: International New York Times March 21, 2021 12:57 UTC