MoS - police strip search guidance “quietly brought in” last December

[QuetzalTerfLus]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10703327/Women-strip-searched-trans-officers-born-male-say-police.html

Unbelievable! (and yet sadly not surprising)

I've written to the Minister, and I'll be writing next to my Police and Crime Commissioner.

I'm asking if they knew about this 'policy' - and if not, why not?

@OverByYer

Same as *@ComplaintsComplaintsComplaints* , I had to search an in tact MTF because policy then was the subject chooses which sex they feel most comfortable with carrying out the search. No regard for the person carrying out the search.

OMG this is dreadful. Thank heavens for Cathy Larkman. We need sane and sensible women like her in policing. It sounds like the current policy is designed to gratify male kinks with women as the support humans

I’m so angry. Get your fucking misogynist hands and policies off women!
This is a point on the continuum that sees a woman in America charged with murder for an abortion (happened recently). The continual overriding of what women want and what control they have over their bodies.

Is it ‘allowed’ to email Kit Malthouse and also copying in your own MP and Boris Johnson’s office? Is there protocol involved with that?

I thought non-crime hate incidents were "being reviewed" after they were shown to be totally inconsistent/ unworkable?

@PrelateChuckles

I thought non-crime hate incidents were "being reviewed" after they were shown to be totally inconsistent/ unworkable?

Not to mention that the police are knee deep in them, they are a complete waste of time, resources and taxpayer money, and all they effectively do is provide a data base of female people who think they can have boundaries.

Livid.

As pp says, you can group the people affected and disadvantaged by this entirely by one characteristic. Sex. Heads male people win, tails, female people lose. This is flat out sex based oppression.

Who gets to define discriminatory views?

Quite. I wouldn't object to being searched by a transman but I would not accept being searched by a transwoman on the basis that they are male not because they are trans.

The guidance, quietly issued in December, was brought to light by retired Superintendent Cathy Larkman
…
Mrs Larkman, 54, grew increasingly concerned with the declining trust women had in the police following a spate of scandals including the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer.

Last October, responding to fears among some women that they had no option over the sex of the officer searching them, she wrote letters to the College of Policing, the Police Federation and the NPCC seeking clarification that this was not the case.
…
But she was left 'absolutely gobsmacked' when the NPCC finally released its new guidance to her last week.

'The more I read it, the more shocked I was,' she told The Mail on Sunday. 'This is a devastating blow to women's trust in the police. Women are not even an afterthought in this guidance — they are completely non-existent. Everything is geared towards the sensitivities of the officer doing the searching

It's quite the thing to read it laid out like this and to read just how completely absent women were from this decision. Despite the revelations around Dr Konstancja Duff and Child Q (as above).

tbh, in the circumstances outlined by OverByYer and Complaints I'd be surprised if transmen or NBs would be queuing up to search those men.

Is the implied shortage of women officers to carry out the searches an insight into the smaller numbers of women who are detained/searched/arrested? Why is it so implausible that women's dignity should be preserved and that they should be respected in their choices without running the risk of a non-crime hate incident based on somebody's perception of discrimination? How is this a democratic process or just?

I’m so sorry you’d to experience that @ComplaintsComplaintsComplaints & @OverByYer: women are neither dolls nor puppets to be played with & manipulated like that. It’s always women [& girls] who are casually disregarded in these kinds of situations - women [& girls] who can’t POSSIBLY have needs/desires/feelings. It’s quite literally medieval - & also explains why women are somehow apparently the locus of evil once again - but I think GenderWoo is more offensively ascientific than anything that went on in the Middle Ages.

As noted, there is a (very deliberate) disruption of the balance of power by male persons* who demand female police &/or prison officers be the ones to search them. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to characterise it as abusive behaviour, even; & the police & prison services should be protecting their female officers from abusive behaviour as far as possible rather than deliberately exposing them to it.

Perfectly valid for male officers to identify as female officers as is required. In fact, I’m fairly sure that if gender fluidity were explained in those terms - & that freedom of gender expression means changing nothing at all about their appearance unless they want to - plenty of male officers would be literally queuing up to get their “female” warrant card to show to anyone cruel enough to suggest that they are somehow NOT the sort of human requested to conduct the search. Acceptance without exception etc…

• how said male persons choose to identify would of course be only their own business were they not engaging in behaviours that are actively damaging to others; most specifically, immediately & obviously, in this instance, female police & prison officers

Not wanting an N+1 situation in terms of detainees, but this policy has much more of an effect on female staff. We know that transwomen as a group retain male patterns of criminal behaviour so it is a female officer who is much more likely to be in this position and they are unable to refuse the order to carry out the strip search.

I don't know if anyone here has ever been strip searched by police. I have. It was in the early 00s and done to check whether I had anything on me I might hurt myself with whilst in the cells (all this resulting from crap mental health services). It was done by a female officer with another present. Done a bit at a time so I was never totally naked and they were very gentle in manner. Despite all this I found the experience traumatising and it is difficult to think about even now. A sense of boundaries crossed.

Around the same time, a male police officer texted me and asked me out. He met me because I'd been arrested. I asked how he got my number and he said "I'm a police officer".

I apologise if this post isn't very coherent, but I have been that scared and extremely vulnerable young woman and the realities of this situation are very apparent to me. Men WILL abuse it, and not in an obscure fringe case but a lot.

Along with sorting this travesty, the Government need to get Stonewall out of the police rapidly.

The horrific misogyny of the police laid bare yet again. Fucking hell.

So sorry for what you had to undergo Complaints and OverByYer. I also agree with you Whitefire that this policy will probably impact women officers disproportionately given the much greater rate of male criminal behaviour. Where were the Police "unions", when all this was decided? It would appear that like the mainstream trade unions, professional associations don't give a fuck about their female members.

This is one strand of something that is softly and perniciously sliding into law, that there is a legal right of male entitlement of access to females, regardless of female consent.

• Thou shalt not suffer a female to state that her sexuality is one that excludes male persons from sex with her body

• Thou shalt not (in Scotland, avoided only by fierce campaigning) suffer a raped women to choose not to be intimately examined in her trauma by a male service provider who wishes to do it

• Thou shalt not refuse the right of male persons to be locked up with and shower with female persons in prisons

• Thou shalt not refuse the right of male police officers to intimately search a female person

Female consent and the right to set boundaries over who can see and touch their body according to the perceptions? Means nothing if the male person chooses to use a particular avenue to enforce their superior right of access. And in the workplace, the needs of the male worker wholly trump those of the female service user, with the chilling effect of the punishment of 'hate crime' and being reported should the female not comply with that male person's wishes.

This is a fucking outrage. I'm so furious I want to cry. What can we do? Who do we write to? How can we claw back the human rights I foolishly thought we had all along?

I'll add that when accessing said female, it is not the female's mind or thoughts or deeply held inner beliefs and feelings, or sense of identity, or preferred gender stereotypes or personality that is in any way relevant.

So what of the female is left, I wonder, that is so important to this business of not being permitted to say no?

@Pixiedust1234

Never thought I would say this but thank fuck for the daily mail at the moment

Likewise. The supposed divisions between 'left' (ie. rightthink) and 'right' (wrongthink) have unravelled in recent years anyway. I don't think a left-right division exists anymore in any straightforward sense, and have always digested my news from a variety of sources on all 'sides' of the political spectrum. I don't necessarily want to see my own ideas parroted back at me in constant affirmation: you can't develop a critical mindset without consideration of alternative views.

This constant apologism: that 'OMG I've just clicked on the Daily Mail!' is getting more than a bit tedious. Yes, I do read it: I find the comments especially illuminating. Yes, the site is still racist and misogynistic. And so are the Times and the Telegraph. As for the Graun, as far as misogyny is concerned it's been a lost cause since I can't remember when. The departure of Suzanne Moore was a real low point.

The Mail has consistently shone a light on this issue, which is so urgent that women need as much exposure of the erasure of our rights as we can get. Last week saw real progress. The left/right divide people persist in clinging to is nothing more than lazy ideological thinking, with a lot of sneering on both sides about people who think differently. And sometimes, the sneering is far worse when it emanates from the 'left' (by whom, incidentally, I feel completely betrayed). CF. Remainers vs. Brexiters, and I was a staunch remainer.

So for the present at least I'm of the same sentiment: thank fuck for the Daily Mail (and the Graun can get to fuckery ....).

@PaintingAlmostDone

I don't know if anyone here has ever been strip searched by police. I have. It was in the early 00s and done to check whether I had anything on me I might hurt myself with whilst in the cells (all this resulting from crap mental health services). It was done by a female officer with another present. Done a bit at a time so I was never totally naked and they were very gentle in manner. Despite all this I found the experience traumatising and it is difficult to think about even now. A sense of boundaries crossed.

Around the same time, a male police officer texted me and asked me out. He met me because I'd been arrested. I asked how he got my number and he said "I'm a police officer".

I apologise if this post isn't very coherent, but I have been that scared and extremely vulnerable young woman and the realities of this situation are very apparent to me. Men WILL abuse it, and not in an obscure fringe case but a lot.

I'm so sorry for your awful experience.

That boundary crossing by the male officer is so serious and yet a depressingly common example of precisely the kind of male entitlement that exists everywhere. I don't think men have a fucking clue how terrifying it actually is for the women receiving this kind of unsolicited advance. Maybe the less abusive ones think "they can just say no". They don't realise that it is yet another experience - state sanctioned in your case - letting women know their place as objects for males. We are objects and if even the police agree we have no one to appeal to.

I've almost been strip searched (will spare details, had v misspent youth). I'm under no illusions that it couldn't happen. And I'd have thought to some abusive males*, strip searching a "TERF" on suspicion of wrong think would be a goal in itself. Some incel is probably flooding twitter with misinformation about where we hide razor blades as we speak.

*I know of a racist who joined the police to harras people of colour. I'm sure there are going to be misogynist males extra attracted to the police force now. Although they've evidently got plenty already.

This policy is so vile I'm wondering if the CoP are secretly GC. Surely, it leaves trans officers instructed to carry out a strip search extremely exposed to complaints of sexual assault? Although, rape and SA have almost been decriminalised, they'd still have to go through the process, perhaps they're hoping this will force them out of the force?

Actually, I'm not given to conspiracy theories, so I believe they're misogynists who've been completely Stonewalled.

I was strip searched because I happened to be in a flat at the same time another person was arrested. One female officer. I was 18. It was humiliating and scary. The thought of that happening with a male officer and an 18 yo just doesn't bear thinking about.

Here's the trans guidance for the police. - it appears to have been written by Stonewall and a male police officer?

www.npcc.police.uk/2018%20FOI/EDHR/195%2018%20Regional%20Paper%20Trans%20Guidance%20for%20the%20Public%20Sector.pdf

'The Toolkit has been funded by the Police Superintendents’ Association, Surrey Police, Surrey Police & Crime Commissioner, Mr David Munro as the EDHR lead, in consultation with Stonewall.'

That doc says this on searches:

'The law states that chief officers are responsible for providing corresponding operational guidance and instructions for the deployment of trans officers and staff under their direction and control in relation to duties which involve carrying out, or being present at, any of the searches and procedures described in Code A and Code C of PACE. The guidance and instructions must comply with the Equality Act 2010 and should therefore complement the approaches in Annex F, Code A and Annex L, Code C of PACE.
Guidelines are currently being reviewed at a national level in relation to both strip and stop searches and this document will be updated in line with any decisions made.'

Thank god for Cathy Larkman, just a shame she's retired- we need hundreds more officers like her on the force if we stand a chance of balancing out its inbuilt misogyny.

Has anyone a link to this guidance?