Carolyn Farrow taken to police station

[ScreamingMeMe]

Long twitter thread here. She's had her electronic devices seized too, and has been accused of being certain posters on Kiwi Farms and Mumsnet

@BernardBlacksWineIceLolly and @BreakWindandFire sorry to tag you but she's been accused of being you!

We all know who this will be, but as Caroline says, please don't speculate/discuss them.

twitter.com/CF_Farrow/status/1577092705154666496?t=Cv7tRv3YdqIogpXT_MSwZQ&s=19

I know you knew. It just gave me the opportunity to flag that they were indeed still up and running and available for people who might want to 'educate themselves'.

So what? People campaign on all sorts of things I don't agree with.

Doesn't mean they should be investigated by the police.

@Believerinbiology it's just mind boggling that this could happen. To say I'm very disappointed in the polices role in all this is an understatement.

Is the Catholic Church a hate group which should be outlawed?

Let's go back to the 16th century! So progressive!

Exactly

What highlights the insanity of this situation is that actual threats of violence against women, made by people who don't bother to hide who they are, which are not considered worthy of investigation.

Whatever you may think about Carolyn and her beliefs, the contrast with the acceptance of violence against women. Is stark.

I just read that twitter thread. How dreadful. The harassment of her has reached really egregious levels. What an awful invasion of her family life.

If you think about it, anyone could complain to the police about hateful or insulting content on social media. There's a ton of it. I do wish the people who I see on Twitter and elsewhere gloating about Caroline's situation would have the sense to realise that they too could be arrested on the flimsiest pretext if someone takes a dislike to them. However, these people are generally very stupid, so that won't happen.

They said they had no evidence and they barged into a woman's house, took all her equipment including IT, all her passwords, arrested her, held her, threatened to section her, searched her for drugs - for a meme?

A MEME SHE HAS EVIDENCE SHE DIDN’T POST.

not that it fucking matters because memes aren’t illegal, but in another way it does matter because it widens the scope for harassment by cop so massively, from “people who post stuff online” to “everyone.”

Can i find a meme I object to on social media and waltz into the police station and accuse someone completely unconnected that I don’t like of having posted it and get the cops to show up at their house and seize their devices?

if not, why the fuck not? Seems like other people can. Is it because I don’t have a Y chromosome? Why aren’t the cops happy to act as my personal harassment dogs?

Absolutely not. You don’t have to agree with all of someone’s views to support some of them.

I just wouldn’t necessarily call her a GC campaigner. More someone that’s being targeted for being forthright in expressing (all) their views.

And if they were, it wouldn't be illegal, would it?

I loathe her views on same sex marriage and believe abortion should be available as early as possible and as late as necessary. That doesn’t mean that anyone should be able to use the police as a weapon to harass someone when they haven’t broken any law.

Knocking on the door out of the blue, seizing devices, arresting the person and taking them straight to the police station? That seems wildly disproportionate.

Caroline is a gender-critical campaigner.

I haven't read that much from her because she seems a bit nuts but I'm pretty certain that isn't true. She seems much more Gender Traditionalist to me, i.e. she thinks gender sterotypes are real (like a Genderist would) but sees them as a natural and good thing.

A Gender Critical Feminist is someone who thinks gender stereotypes are damaging and used to oppress women.

Of course none of that means I have any less sympathy for her (or concern about police behaviour) being relentlessly harassed by a creep who spends their life attacking women (in every sense).

It's doubly important we defend people's right to free speech when they are unpopular or even unreasonable because by the time popular and reasonable speakers are stopped it's far too late.

The police are quite limited in when they can legally arrest someone. Great summary by lawyers here: hnksolicitors.com/advice/necessity-to-arrest-explained/

I’d be interested to know if the arrest of Ms Farrow was legal and on what grounds the police felt the arrest was “necessary”.

There was a thread on AIBU recently, started by a police officer, tellung us that only 17% of reports to police are NOT mental health issues.

The intention was to show us that the police are far too busy having to respond to such things to deal with 'real' crime but I'm sick to death of reading these stories of police immediately deploying against women accused of "hate crimes" which are either no such bloody thing OR - in CF's case - just malicious accusations by the usual suspects designed to bully and harass her.

With the glaring omission of sex, so hate crimes towards women are apparently allowed.

The police have entirely lost my trust as a direct result of their behaviour towards women. This is just one aspect of their deeply ingrained institutional misogyny

Indeed this.

Police entering a home and removing items without a warrant is ultimately a bad thing for everyone, regardless of whether one happens to agree with that person's views or not.

Chilling is perhaps an overused word on MN but this is exactly what this is. Poor Caroline.

Well, quite. I'd like to think the police officers concerned would lose their jobs for this. They have to be above reproach and abusing their positions isn't good enough.

This isn't just about Caroline. It's about trying to shut down posters on MN and KW. It's about trying to make everyone here 'afraid' that the police will come to their door because it seems that certain police forces will - with no evidence - force entry; seize all electronics; put in cells and threaten with sectioning - anyone who even might have posted something that someone else didn't like.

The police have always had to deal with vexatious and malicious complaints especially against women. When the calls or emails or complaints come, they need to shut them down. The police need to step up about all this bullshit.

There are always going to be arses trying to use the police for their own ends. It's the police's responsibility not to be used by the highest bidder or the loudest voice or the most irritating complainant - we live in the UK not some tinpot dictatorship where the police can be used to pursue individual agendas rather than following the law.

’I'd like to think the police officers concerned would lose their jobs for this.’

The police officers who strip searched a child at school with no appropriate adult present still have jobs. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Appalling behaviour by the police. And on a day when the paedophile scandal erupted at the Mermaids charity, the police are spending their time harassing Caroline.
See the later posts in this thread if you don't know what I'm talking about:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4644323-mermaids-being-investigated-by-the-charity-commission

There are always going to be arses trying to use the police for their own ends. It's the police's responsibility not to be used by the highest bidder or the loudest voice or the most irritating complainant - we live in the UK not some tinpot dictatorship where the police can be used to pursue individual agendas rather than following the law.

Exactly. And FWIW I hold a very low opinion of the individual making the complaint but I'd still be extremely fucked off if they were subjected to this kind of treatment simply for stating their views. Its intolerable.