Suella Braverman says case of pensioner quizzed over ‘keep males out of women-only spaces’ sticker is an example of police ‘straying into politically contentious matters’
- The incident happened in Happy Valley setting Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire
- Officers told the pensioner she had been identified from CCTV footage
Suella Braverman has voiced alarm at the case of a pensioner quizzed over a sticker which said ‘keep males out of women-only spaces’.
The Home Secretary highlighted the episode involving a 73-year-old social worker as an example of police ‘straying into politically contentious matters’.
Officers apparently questioned the woman in her own home after she stopped to take a photograph of the sticker in the street.
It had been placed on to a LGBT+ pride poster which had the slogan Stand By Your Trans. Officers told the 73-year-old retired social worker that she had been identified from CCTV footage.
The woman told The Mail on Sunday she was ‘in a state of shock’ when officers arrived at her door. The incident happened in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire – the setting for BBC crime drama Happy Valley about no-nonsense policewoman Catherine Cawood. It comes after fury over police forces failing to send officers to investigate burglaries and other serious crimes.
Last night, the woman said she had stopped to take a photo with her phone because she agreed with its message that transgender women – who were born male – should not be allowed into women-only spaces such as changing rooms.
She did not share the image on social media and only took the photo to show to her partner when she got home.
But several days later, while she was caring for her seriously ill female partner, two uniformed officers from West Yorkshire Police came calling.
The sticker had been placed on to a LGBT+ pride poster which had the slogan Stand By Your Trans. Officers told the 73-year-old retired social worker that she had been identified from CCTV footage
The Home Secretary highlighted the episode involving a 73-year-old social worker as an example of police ‘straying into politically contentious matters’
‘They gave me a long lecture about the sensitivity of the issue, and how something like this could cause harassment and alarm to the community,’ she said. ‘They were investigating it as a hate crime, which is outrageous. I was in a state of shock.’
The pensioner, who insisted that she didn’t put the sticker on the poster, said she believed she was reported to the police by LGBT+ community group Happy Valley Pride which had put up the Stand By Your Trans poster on an A-board outside the town hall in March.
The group knew the woman’s identity from when she previously wrote to them with her concerns about transgender women being allowed into single-sex spaces. The woman, who said she had complained to West Yorkshire Police about her treatment, asked not to be named over fears of reprisals from online trolls and activists.
‘I think they wanted to correct my thinking,’ she added. ‘They are getting involved in a very divided and toxic debate, but it’s not their role to arbitrate political disagreements. I felt as if they were trying to gag a dissenting voice by harassing me in my own home.’
The police log, which she obtained via a data access request, stated that they had given her ‘words of advice . . . regards the harassment and alarm that this sticker could potentially cause to the community’.
Posting on the X social media site today, Ms Braverman said: ‘This is exactly what I had in mind when writing to police chiefs and commissioning the @HMICFRS review over forces straying into politically contentious matters.’
West Yorkshire has the second-highest crime rate in the UK, but more than 90 per cent of cases go unsolved in the area, according to official figures.
Ms Braverman has raised concerns about police getting involved in gender issues
The same force provoked outrage last month when officers arrested a 16-year-old autistic girl in Leeds for suggesting that a short-haired police officer resembled her ‘lesbian nana’. Viral footage showed seven officers manhandling the girl, who cried out in distress as they took her into custody for a suspected ‘homophobic public-order offence’. The case was later dropped.
Harry Miller, a former police officer, last night accused the officers of ‘thought policing’. He set up the free-speech group Fair Cop after he was investigated in 2019 for posting a limerick on social media suggesting that transgender women are still men. The case was later dropped and he won a High Court case against Humberside Police.
He said: ‘How can a woman photographing a sticker cause alarm and distress to the Happy Valley Pride community? There is politically correct rot at the heart of West Yorkshire policing.’
Stella O’Malley, psychotherapist and founder of international group Genspect, said: ‘It’s not the job of the police to decide that taking a photo is a hate crime.’
West Yorkshire Police said it had recorded the matter as a ‘non-crime hate incident’, adding: ‘Words of advice were given regarding the placing of the sticker, as it was reported to have caused offence.’
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