Today is a horrendous day for women.

[Catsanfan]

I haven't the energy to explain, just skim Aja's twitter this morning. So much there, I am losing heart. Especially the police thing.

Yes, possible. However if they're not out to their employer then they're not likely to be officially recognised as being of the opposite sex by said employer so likely wouldn't be in contention on this issue.

The only thing i can say is.....
Women are never wrong and want all rights women can not be the blame for anything and now men are so fed up with it they are trying to become women them selfs.
😆

It's not about minimising. It's about being realistic about the practicalities.

One woman being searched in this way is one woman too many.
It shouldn’t happen at all.

Even if not an high number of TW

Are you ok with TW doing intimate and / or strip searches on women?

So how many women subject to sexual assault by these men is acceptable to you Flickersy? Do tell.

No I'm not.

But neither do I think it's a realistic possibility given the tiny numbers at play.

I keep reading about how local forces are picking up the slack for overwhelmed mental health services and sometimes need to put vulnerable people (eg having a psychotic break and causing a disturbance) into cells temporarily until an NHS acute MH bed can be found. We also know that the police regularly pick up people causing a nuisance because they are heavily intoxicated. These people are in no position to give consent and often do not have capacity. As PP have said, an ethical position would be a sex-based policy which rules out defacto sexual assault. There are probably many frontline officers who would welcome this clarity as, for the same reason as we have medical chaperones, it protects staff as well as the individual. It’s not rocket science.

None.

But again, I don't think this is likely to happen based on the numbers involved.

Ah I see we arrived at N+1 being the acceptable number of women who can be affected very quickly on this thread

I am a custody officer and our force would not allow a male officer either full trans or identifying as trans to search a female and def not a strip search. A biological female officer would do the searches and a strip search would be at least two female officers (camera free room)

We have one trans female officer and she is fully supportive of this to protect herself from allegations, she has received so much awful abuse in custody from DPs

She has choose not to undertake any searches and we fully support her decision as we would the person being searched.

Then it makes sense to use a policy standard to reinforce the none

Because it really does need to be zero.

By 'realistic possibility', you presumably mean the possibility of it happening to you or to someone you know.

Because it only has to happen once, to a single person, for it to become a reality rather than a possibility.

It is just as wrong whether it is 1 trans officer carrying out 1 strip seatch a year, or 50,000 officers doing 10 a day. For the woman it happensto, the overall maths don't matter.

1 is too many.

To add, I had one male DP ask me (I’m female) to take him to the shower because he identified as female, I simply said nice try and found a male officer. End of the matter.

Vanishingly tiny you say, still happening though isn't it, what if it happened to you? How would you feel? I'll say it again one woman is one woman too many!

Which is very sensible to - as you say - protect everyone involved, officers and detainees.

However, your force's practice is now out of line with national policy.

Who'd have thought that ploice officers Couzens and Carrick would be able to carry out their serial rape, sex offending and murder (aided and abetted by colleagues)?
Who'd have thought the police paedophile Edwards would have 200 teenage victims ?
Who'd have thought the police would wholesale start referring to male crimes of sexual violence agains women and children as crimes committed by women? And on and on.

Once you dismiss this dangerous attitude to a woman's right not to be sexually assaulted by a male officer who claims to be a woman, you hand over all of these women and girls to dangerous people.
No decent male police officer would want to strip search an unconsenting woman. But a dangerous man without boundaries would.

Custody SGTs are allowed to use discretion (and common sense) they just have to justify it. That is how we work and I’ve worked in four custody suites in our force and it is our policy and it won’t change.

If it (almost) never happens then make it policy not to happen

But they arnt identifying as trans they identify as women so those won't be correct stats surely

Are people on this thread down playing the impact on vulnerable women again?

Colour me shocked!

@Ginorchoc Your tw officer seems sensible, he's to be congratulated. I'm a bit concerned that it appears to be at his discretion though? What if he thought differently. He's got to get through the custody sergeant (assuming he isn't the cs), but can the cs count on the brass having his back if the tw complained of discrimination? And if he escalated it? This is official policy.

We're back to n+1 again

Yep, the support on this goes right to the top. Even then a custody Sgt has more control in custody than a Chief Super.

The custody Sgt can also be challenged by custody officers if they feel a decision needs rethinking, we are mainly female crewed custody’s anyway, but I can guarantee if a male custody officer or Sgt wobbled, his thinking would be bought back round, but in reality we are all very much on the same page on this.

Thanks for responding. It's good to hear but still troubling in light of the guidelines.