Suella Braverman statement about police behaviour and TRA police officer response

[Truthlikeness]

I was heartened to see the letter to policing leaders published by the Home Secretary yesterday, reminding them of the importance of remaining politically neutral. She included reference to the heavy handed tactics used against GC women and their failure to take action against violent TRA threats. She also described the Progress flag as 'symbolising highly contested ideologies'.

Full letter here - https://twitter.com/suellabraverman/status/1697905696145092684?s=46&t=qrlGvkcRV2VhASm_7kkOnw

And the response from a serving police officer - rather neatly illustrating the need for the letter in the first place. I don't see how that can result in anything other than dismissal.

https://twitter.com/wearefaircop/status/1698034987826614582?s=46&t=qrlGvkcRV2VhASm_7kkOnw

Because let's be very clear about this. The police are choosing to get involved in petty shit at the expense of real police matters. The police are choosing to toe the trans activist line.

Despite Felix's incessant bleating that they can't just ignore reports made to them because the activists would be very upset and go to the press, I guarantee you that if the police said, "You called us over a sticker? Stop wasting our time!" and booked the culprit, (a) the public would be 100% behind the police, and (b) the time wasting activists would stop doing it.

They are using the police as enablers and enforcers in their activism because the police allow themselves to be used in this way.

There's no delusion. Most I know are tired , run into the ground with refereeing petty shit and just want to be catching the bad guys .

i nearly bust a rib. No. No. No.

That is delusional tripe. I read today about something going on in the Met area.
The plod are, as usual, doing the square root of fuck all. The victim's husband got video evidence, there is no indication the plod even went looking for it. So no. You are run into the ground with the weight of your own incompetence.

Met Police not taking masked stranger attack seriously - victim - BBC News

But the ONE trans police officer who decried it out of 145,000 gets the front page .

also. You claim that this forum has an anti police agenda. It is utter tripe but then you write this bollocks (bold above) and show us you have UNDERSTOOD nothing of what has been written time after time page after page. One trans police officer isn't running the "let's have harsh words of advice, as 3 officers, to an old lady who took a photograph", are they? or are they?

I used to have this board hidden and now I remember why

. I'm a woman . I want women only
Spaces and I agree with a lot but we'll have to agree to disagree .

I find these boards hostile prickly and difficult if you don't have a hive mind .

I'll let you get back to whatever point it is you're trying to prove.

there isn't a hive mind, FFS, stop overreacting.

We are talking about actual events and the Police defenders are trying to tell us we're always wrong and the police are always on top of things. Or that they're not all bad.

Do you know what is bad? the bad ones. But also the ones who just let it all slide for the sake of a quiet life. Meahwhile old women have 3 plods visit to tell her she is Very Very Wrong to take a photograph of a sticker.

@fabmaccawhackythumbsaloft you've interpreted my intentions for starting this thread twice now, so I would like to clarify them.

This is a feminist board, active in debating feminist issues, so of course I was interested in the aspects of Braverman's letter that refer to this issue. The very first examples Braverman references in her letter are "perceived offence taken at gender critical views" and "failure to take action at threats of violence made by trans activists directed at biological women". The letter is not solely about the conflict between women's and trans rights - and no-one ever claimed it was - but it does very much have them at the forefront.

The comments by that serving officer were so egregious and symptomatic of the point being made that I felt they were also worth highlighting. The force's response to them in the light of the letter will also tell us a lot.

I am very supportive of good policing. It's a career I once seriously considered and I have friends who are/were officers. It's taken me a long time to come to criticise them as an institution but I can no longer deny the problems go beyond the occasional bad apple to deep-seated, systemic issues, which I hope (and am optimistic) will eventually be resolved.

I have faith that most officers would rather not involve themselves in matters of sticker photography. Those that do, probably need 'words of advice' from a wise senior officer. There's plenty for the police forces to do, and this kind of Useful Idiocy is wasting their time and our money.

@BezMills I think they're also in danger of straying into harassment territory.

I posted a link to the Protection from Harassment Act above. There is an exemption for conduct in connection with preventing and investigating crimes, which is necessary because the police need to be able to interview people - even innocent people - in connection with crimes without being guilty of harassment.

But as has been said ad infinitum on this thread, photographing a sticker is neither a crime nor a course of conduct which could, in conjunction with other conduct, constitute harassment. You cannot commit harassment by accident just by looking at and photographing a sticker in a public place, no matter how upset someone might be to see you doing that, and no matter how many other issues that person might have going on in their life to cause such an extreme reaction.

Harassment requires a minimum of two incidents before it can be said to form a pattern of behaviour. The police would be well advised to steer well clear of sticker lady from now on, because if they interview her again in without there being a connection to any crime, I think it is they who would be guilty of harassment, and unable to rely on the exemption in the legislation if the reason they are paying her a visit is, yet again, not in connection with a crime, but to make someone who is offended feel that SoMeThInG hAs BeEn DoNe.

Well as we have seen in the Saga Of PC Useful, Sorry Police, Anti Terror Legislation and the Innocent Mother of Four, it's quite possible for the police to end up engaged, perhaps unwittingly*, in a campaign of harassment directed at an entirely innocent member of the public.

*let's say, charitably, that this is a case of Sorry Police being Useful Idiots - let's give them the benefit of the doubt

The only way you can be unwittingly engaged in harassment is if a reasonable person ought to know that what you are doing is harassment, which I think probably sums up the mother of four saga nicely. They're harassing her whether they know that that is what they are doing or not. But they will get away with it due to the exemption in the legislation, despite the fact that what they are investigating is not actually criminal.

And in the mean time we have police officers on Mumsnet explaining that looking at a sticker could constitute harassment if the person looking at the sticker was also separately committing harassment, despite the fact that the person concerned hasn't committed harassment and that even if they had, the sticker wouldn't be relevant in any way because it is an interaction between the person photographing the sticker and her environment, not an interaction between her and a person she is supposedly harassing.

Jesus wept.

well people explain all kinds of things on the internet.

I'm not playing chess with a pigeon. got no time for that.

I have time on my hands for the next few days before I go back to work, which is why I've been able to engage. But I think it is worth pointing out, for the benefit of any lurkers, that what this person who has identified themselves as a police officer has said about harassment is incorrect.

They might be posting from an anonymous account, meaning that the police could dismiss their posts as not being the official position of the police (MNHQ if anyone reports this post I am NOT troll hunting, I have no reason to disbelieve anyone who says they are a police officer).

But it has echoes of what we have seen on Twitter from official police force accounts, where they appear to have misrepresented the law, either by accident or to suit their agenda. Several police forces tweeted that misgendering is a hate crime, forcing the then Attorney General to issue a statement saying that it most certainly is not.

I mean no disrespect, at all, to you @MargotBamborough - you do you!

I've served my time, I'm out early for good behaviour.

MargotBamborough
We are not talking about Margaret standing outside Samantha's place of work. We are talking about Margaret photographing a sticker.
We are talking about how seemingly non crime non events can build into pattern of harassment. So if you have a reporting person who contacts the police and states that all of this is related and why - they should be listened to. I guarantee that the majority of these type of calls are screened out at source - but ones get passed the caller taker stage and dispatcher stage because there is something reported which may elude to a crime of harassment. Are are you happy for the police to say "sorry that you have experienced a series of events and you have finally plucked up the courage to contact us after this last incident -but we are not going to bother and we don't care your life is being made miserable - you should get a grip as the last incident is not even a crime!"

In all your long experience of dealing with harassment cases, has anyone ever been convicted of harassment for undertaking completely legal behaviour in a public place which is neither directed at nor involves the alleged "victim" in any way?
But you have no idea what the reporting person has said in the instance! - so if it does elude to a suspicion of harassment then there must have been a victim to it.
But again who's view point are you going off? The victim states that suspect is deliberately taking a photo to deliberately to intimidate them as its part of series of events. The suspect denies this, 'its a public place and I can do what I want'. Do we just ignore the victim then? After all we can't prove harassment as the suspect must 'know or ought to know'. Even if you use this mythical 'reasonable person' it will be down to a court to judge ultimately what a 'reasonable person' believes. Do we not even bother speaking to the 'suspect' and just assume what they will say to us?

Do we do this with other crimes - assaults for example. Just assume that the suspect will use a self-defence as their alibi, so we won't even bother speaking to them?

And yes - I convict people all the time for harassment/stalking who are engaging in legal behaviour - but their pattern of behaviour amounts to harassment/stalking.

You cannot commit harassment by accident just by looking at and photographing a sticker in a public place.......
And you're OK for the police just to assume this without any kind of investigation. So the reporting person has said that "...all of this is part of an ongoing harassment..." Without any form of investigation, you're happy for the police to just assume - '...well it must have been an accident...'

You obviously have no idea how harassment can affect a person's life and can often push them to the point of suicide, you can not just declare them 'nutters'. Was this older lady arrested, bundled into a van, arrested and held in a cell, remanded - no. She was merely spoken with. No crime was recorded against her.

Are we in a society now where police can not even speak to some one about an alleged offence or incident without having every bit of evidence against them before they do so?

But will no one think of my scrolling thumb? It’s so tired

OK Felix, riddle me this.

If Margaret was aware that Samantha, a person she has previously engaged with in a way she knows or ought to know Samantha found upsetting on at least one occasion, was present in the place where the sticker was, and intended to engage with her in such a way again (making two incidents which taken together could constitute harassment)...

...why did she choose to harass Samantha by photographing a sticker?

Isn't that a bit...weird? And random?

How many people think, "Oh look, there's that person I don't like, I know, I'll photograph this sticker! That will really upset them! Hahaha!"

Wouldn't Margaret, I don't know, turn to Samantha, point at the sticker and say, "This means people like you need to keep out of women's spaces" or something a bit more obvious than that?

Because as I have pointed out to you several times now, harassment is behaviour which a reasonable person would consider to be such.

How many reasonable people would consider photographing a sticker in a public place to be harassment?

Now please stop with the "you have no idea how much harassment can affect someone's life". I do, in fact, having been the victim of harassment which I did not even report to the police because, frankly, why bother?

I should not have to explain to a police officer what harassment is and what it is not. You should know. And you do know. You're just trying to blind the general public with science to justify why your colleagues are investigatng thought crimes instead of real crimes. Unfortunately for you, this member of the public is a lawyer, and not impressed.

Ditto.
I did wonder what the lengthy first year criminal law exam scenarios were all about Margot.😁Your big reveal gave me a laugh.

Also a legal bod (rtd) and police and firefighter family and friends. Of several generations. So not anti police for those who think we are here to police bash for the sake of it.

I've no time for corrupt, criminal, self serving, afraid to challenge piss poor decisions, and/or thick police officers of any rank. An increasing minority it seems - despite reviews, lessons will be learned and other weasel words

I welcome the Home Secretary's letter wholeheartedly. I'm sure the pissed off burgled public will, as a pp says. We just want good, honest, impartial, resourced coppering. That's what the majority of decent police officers want.

GC women are NOT the baddies here for calling out bad policing and leadership.

Those claiming to be Officers, boasting about how important they are and what they do, endlessly deflecting and talking rubbish on a board not designed with them in mind, insisting they have a RIGHT TO BE HERE, aren't the real thing. IMO. We see their agenda.

Mostly, I choose not to directly engage.

Thinking of you at this difficult time
It is indeed getting tedious, so off for some Tunnocks.
Thumbs up, and may all your National Trust visits meet expectations😊

So they are actively spending time building up and recording patterns of behaviour. And then spending so much time building up and recording patterns of behaviour there is no time to do anything about ACTUAL behaviour.

I have to say that I am a little disturbed, on this thread and others, about people making up fictitious back stories. These stories are then used to justify the appalling behaviour of some police areas. I can only hope that anyone doing this is not a serving officer.

yes I agree. I didn't serve in the Border Force for 65 years just to come on here in my spare time to read this.

As a serving traffic warden with 177 years in the harness I’m appalled

Glinner has been invited to speak at Tory Conference Freedom of speech event. However the GMP refused accreditation.

Apparently once the Tories found out they reversed the decision.
Don't tell me the police don't need sorting.

https://twitter.com/WeAreFairCop/status/1700054403842019795?t=9NodI62G53w9qL7e11oQyw&s=19

I'm not entirely sure when this happened but it shows complete contempt for Suella Baverman. She's been very clear about non crime hate incidents and freedom of speech before now.

"Ignore the minister, she's transphobic."
It's like Stonewall et al have formed an alternative government.