DCC Julie 'Pronouns' Cooke is telling all police forces to update their search policies. Bristol Police want to lead the way!

[SmileOrDie]

soundcloud.com/user-774523960/helen-riddle-bcfm-26_9_19

Interview with Bristol/Avon officer Helen Riddle. DCC Julie Cooke ( remember her from International Pronouns Day?
twitter.com/dccjuliecooke/status/1184397495423655936?lang=en ) has written to every force in the country telling them to update their search policies.
Riddle (Bristol) says basing search policies on biological sex is outdated and her force will lead the way in doing it by gender instead.

Because that won't be exploited by male suspects wanting to intimidate female officers at all will it?

I know, they could do it by sex AND gender. So transfeminine prisoners could be searched by a male officer with a female name tag on. Doesn't matter their actual gender identity as they won't be having enough conversation to find out their internal essence. Though I suppose if some prisoners might be bigoted about officers not presenting in line with their stated gender identity, the male officer could wear a wig to make them feel more at ease.

So women must be intimately searched by a male police officer on any day that he decides to identify as a woman?
The court case following that one will be interesting

Beginning is about updating their systems to 'record identities'. No mention of sex.
From about 4:45 talking about searching suspects... all focused on the rights of trans staff under the EqA(?!) not rights of suspects or female officers, says that it's a problem that Police And Criminal Evidence Act is based on bio sex not gender.

Biological sex is outdated?

FFS, how do they say these things with a straight face?

Women in the vulnerable position (prisoners, airport search, Gyno exam, breast exam etc) I think obviously ought to have a right not to be intimately searched/examined by a male practitioner however they identify (men should have the choice to use male staff however he identifies).

The reverse might not be true, if for example when hired the staff was told the job could include searches / exams on males or females and was based on gender ID. However I don’t think anyone’s policy anywhere says that. At best what’s being done is to backflip redefine women as “anyone who says they are” and then claiming this has always been the definition. And thus that all women staff who object are bigots who aren’t doing their job.

Unfortunately, there is a certain type of person who earmarks positions of power because they are fundamentally vicious and take a sadistic pleasure in causing distress and suffering to others. This is such a person.

NC’d for this

I am a female police officer so I have quite a few thoughts on this. All the officers I work with do understand the difference between sex and gender. Piers Morgan and the Daily Mail are popular with Police so they’ve picked it up from there.

Currently searches on the street can be cross sex.

It’s very telling though that in my experience Male police officers, altho they are allowed to search females on the street, really really dislike doing so and will almost always call for a female officer to do it. They are afraid of allegations and generally just feel uncomfortable

Also, a male searching a female often won’t search very thoroughly because they feel awkward so could easily miss something (eg an article concealed for self harm, not an uncommon thing). This could lead to a female detainee managing to injure themselves. There really is a need for some critical thinking here.

Any search further than what you get on the street is same sex only in PACE.

If this is broached in my force I shall be challenging it and I know I won’t be the only one.

I am not doing a strip search on someone with a cock and balls; I don’t agree with a female prisoner being searched by someone with a cock and balls either. Many of the females who come through our custodies are vulnerable and have previously been victims of abuse, DV etc

You can hear the doubt creeping into the interviewer's voice as he wrestles with the practical ramifications of all this. You can nearly hear him telling himself it can't all be as ridiculous as it sounds or they wouldn't be doing it would they?

And I notice he completely skipped over what she actually said, about the rights of officers conducting strip searches, to focus on the rights of the targets of strip searches. Presumably he mentally edited what she said into something more sensible before he could respond to it.

He didn't think she could really be advocating for the rights of male police officers to "identify as" women in order to strip search women who get no say in the matter. Unfortunately, I think she was.

@YeOldeNameChange Really good to hear that you won't stand for this!

Have you had a chance to listen to it all? Because she says that it's a problem that PACE is sex-based and wants to move on from 'binary biological' law.

And it sounds like it will be coming your way - in the interview Riddle says DCC Cooke has written to every force telling them to update. Suppose it depends on whether your force has a Riddle type who wants to 'lead nationally' or whether common sense still prevails?

A police officer advocating that born men be allowed to search vulnerable women and female children is surely not only crossing all sorts of safeguarding boundaries but also exhibiting a very worrying failure of understanding about sexual boundaries? What on earth makes her think that this is OK? These are the values of predators, not responsible police officers.

I will insist on being strip searched by a female officer if I'm ever in Bristol

Or maybe she's under cover and helping the Women's Centre for Justice out sexually abusive police officers?

www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/news/2019/10/24/help-us-hold-police-officers-who-abuse-women-to-account

Yes I listened and made notes.
I’m sure if they want to change PACE they will have to get lawyers in? Police policy doesn’t trump PACE - although presumably you could be disciplined in theory there is just so much scope for litigation isn’t there?
From detainees and officers.

I would assume that too, but who knows any more?
Good luck to you, really glad to hear you're on the case!

What authority does she have to tell other police forces how to act?

@Birdsfoottrefoil maybe she went on a course?

We all know who will have run that course don't we? One of the many heavily funded anti women groups.

Is this the sort of thing the Fair Cop case would challenge?

Is this person the police equivalent of the dentist from Little Shop of Horrors? Did she join the force in the hopes of causing people distress? I mean, I guess she could just be clodhoppingly insensitive but this seems more like malice.

Cooke doesn't have any authority to tell other police forces what to do, as far as I am aware.

Biological sex is outdated?

Yes! It's being around for 1.2 billion years. Surely time for a change.

The trouble is BlackForestCake that we are all under the thumb of groups who have no authority to tell others what to do. Yet the government funds these groups and organisations like the civil service M & S, John Lewis etc are following their edicts with no questions asked - even when the advice is in open defiance of the law.
How we challenge this I don't know - but this is who gives these dangerous individuals an overwhelming sense of self importance and power.

Saw a police documentary the other night. Man cut himself on his own knife he'd been threatening someone with. Female police officer attempts first aid with camera filming the wound. Next thing - her voice & subtitles telling him to get his hand off her arse. She then speaks to camera about not letting this sort of thing put her off her work. Final bit - he's been done for sexual assault as well as everything else. Even while injured & bleeding, a male suspect assaults a female officer. I would not be a police, security or prison officer.

Was thinking more about this so hoping my thoughts make sense. I was imagining a scenario where a trans person was in custody and subject to a strip search and the possible pitfalls of same “gender” searching.

For a start I could get out of searching a TW by saying I am gender free sorry or identify as male

In a strip search you don’t ever touch the detainee’s genitals but you do have a good look at them. So eg the detainee would keep their upper clothing on and remove the lower. They aren’t meant to be stark naked at any point.

Women are known to hide things inside the vulva and presumably males do the same somehow in their genitals or anus. Luckily I don’t know exactly what they do and since I don’t have male genitalia I’m not entirely familiar with what can be concealed there and how (another reason not to have cross-sex searching - poor knowledge of opposite sex genital configuration maybe?)

Now if an officer is forced to do cross-sex searching in this way it’s just so obvious that officers will avoid looking properly. Lives could be lost (detainees do conceal drugs, razor blades..). Our natural tendency is to feel awkward when faced with a random member of the opposite sex’s genitals isn’t it? Queer/gender theory yet again damaging people’s natural boundaries.

So I’m imagining my male colleagues told here’s a trans man with a vagina strip search them. I know my colleagues would be absolutely mortified and would either pretend to do it or just not look properly.

And most of all for a detainee to be naked on the bottom half and two officers of the opposite sex to be present is so so wrong I just can’t get why it not obvious.