Female suspects can be strip-searched by male police officers who ‘identify as women’

Recent guidance released by the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) allows male officers who identify as female to strip-search women in custody, a former police superintendent has revealed.

Cathy Larkman shared the contents of the document, first circulated in December, with the Mail on Sunday.

It reports the guidelines advise that female suspects who object to being searched by a male officer may have a ‘non-crime hate incident’ recorded against their name.

’Gobsmacked’

The guidelines state: “Chief Officers are advised to recognise the status of Transgender colleagues from the moment they transition, considered to be, the point at which they present in the gender with which they identify.

“Thus, once a Transgender colleague has transitioned, they will search persons of the same gender as their own lived gender.”

Mrs Larkman told the newspaper she was “absolutely gobsmacked” when she read the document, adding: “The more I read it, the more shocked I was”.

“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.”

‘Beyond belief’

The former superintendent continued: “They claim they are trying to be inclusive. But this isn’t inclusive of women and it doesn’t respect their sex.”

“To top it off”, she said, “if I as a woman was being strip-searched and I said ‘no, I’m not being searched by that officer, that’s a man’ I could be written up for committing a non-crime hate incident.

I could be written up for committing a non-crime hate incident

“The document then says that, if that does happen, they should consider giving support to the officer affected, not the member of the public. It is absolutely beyond belief.”

Safety compromised

Mrs Larkman, who retired after more than 30 years in the police, also expressed concern for female officers.

She feared that if they are “searching biological males who self-identify as women they will be under a lot of pressure to just go along with it and keep quiet because they could be disciplined for refusing”.

A spokeswoman for campaign group Respect My Sex If You Want My X responded: “Female police officers should never be put in the position where they have to search men.

“Similarly, a woman should never be searched by a male officer, whatever ‘identity’ he claims.”

Biology

Last August, Surrey’s Police and Crime Commissioner Lisa Townsend urged its police force to cut ties with the LGBT lobby group Stonewall over its promotion of transgender ideology.

Following her election in May, she said the “single biggest issue” she first received emails about was the danger of gender self-identification. She called Stonewall “a threat to women” for claiming that men who self-identify as female should be allowed in women-only spaces.

Townsend said: “Women are built differently. We’re not just small men”, adding it “does no-one any good to pretend that biology doesn’t matter”.

More recently, she was reported to Surrey Police and Crime Panel by disgraced MP Crispin Blunt. He accused her of ‘transphobia’ for speaking up for women’s sex-based rights.