Imagine, if you will, a police officer performing an intimate bodily search on your wife or daughter.

Now, imagine that the officer is a man. Would it make you happier to know that the person with the twig and berries claims to be a woman? Would your wife or your daughter breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the man about to humiliate her tells others that he is not a man?

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty sure my wife would be horrified, and I know I would be enraged beyond comprehension. Having a mentally ill man in a woman’s uniform grope a woman is sexual assault.

Yet that scenario is becoming a reality in Great Britain. In fact, a majority of police forces have quietly instituted policies that allow men who claim to be women perform body searches on females.

If the woman objects she could even be subject to hate crimes charges.

Another nail in the coffin of common sense

A majority UK police forces allow biological male officers who self-identify as 'trans women' to strip- search women.

Gender self-ID is NOT the UK law. But it's women who suffer, so somehow that is OK?https://t.co/0F6PPGCM0m pic.twitter.com/MVBdDypsdH

— Gerald Posner (@geraldposner) January 8, 2024

This reality is detailed in a new report from the Women’s Rights Network out of the UK.

The report is shocking for many reasons, not the least of which is that a report on this practice was necessary to bring the issue to the public’s attention. One would think that after decades of public policy discussions about the privacy rights of women such a momentous shift in policy would be a matter of public debate and discussion.

But no. The decision was made behind closed doors because a gender activist at the National Police Chiefs’ Council pushed the organization to set a standard for which police officers could search whom.

According to the laws of Britain, the relevant standard is based on sex for obvious reasons. But as with so many things these days, “gender” and hence “self-ID” of gender replaced sex as the relevant variable.

It was already common for the police to defer to the wishes of the people they searched regarding the sex of the officer performing it; this policy, though, did something far more troubling: it allowed the officer, who has all the power, to decide whether or not he is a woman and to on that basis assert his right to search a female.

This is insane.

In December 20213 , the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) approved a policy paper4 put forward by their LGBTQ+ portfolio lead Deputy Chief Constable (DCC) Vanessa Jardine5 that proposed the “adoption of a consistent searching policy for transgender officers and staff across forces nationally”. The paper proposed for the first time that officers be permitted to strip and even intimately search suspects of the opposite sex if the officer self-identified as the same “gender” as the person being searched. This was exposed by the Women’s Rights Network in April 2022. It has also since been reported by the organisation Keep Prisons Single Sex6 .

Women’s Rights Network calls on the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) to withdraw this flawed and dangerous policy.

The policy – which has been accepted and is now being implemented by the majority of police forces across the country – does not refer to the protected characteristic of sex7 . Instead, it proposes that selfidentified “gender” is used in place of sex in contravention of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE). PACE states8 that searches involving the removal of more than outer clothing are required to be conducted by, and only in the presence of, an officer or staff member of the same sex, and out of public view.

In order to compile this report, the Women’s Rights Network had to use the UK’s Freedom of Information laws to suss out what exactly was happening. This was not the sort of thing that the National Police Chiefs Council wanted to broadcast and debate–as if it wouldn’t get out.

Cathy Larkman, a retired police superintendent, was among those who was outraged by the change in policy.

Policing is often a thankless and difficult job and must therefore have strong leaders. Those who can make decisions which are in the best interests of the public and of the service. We need leaders who are lawful, impartial, reasonable and ethical in their decision-making and leadership. I am therefore deeply shocked that the National Police Chiefs Council has failed in respect of all these principles.

I have instead seen a service now riven with the influence of ideologues, a service that puts more value on the words and feelings of extreme activists and lobbying bodies to the detriment of the population it serves. As a result, we now have a service that allows the strip-searching of women and girls by male officers, and forces female officers to strip-search males who claim they are women.

Searching is by its very essence, a deeply invasive act. It is therefore vital that this power is always exercised in a legal and proportionate manner. Where this goes wrong — as in the case of Child Q2 — it has profound and lasting consequences, for both the person searched and for the reputation of the police service.

Police leaders have let down women and girls. They have let down female officers and staff. My question to them is – what on earth were you thinking?

What were they thinking?

Thinking is not what anybody in these positions of power is doing anymore. It is more like bowing down to the Gods of Alphabet ideology, or at least keeping out of the line of fire, since these days the inmates run the asylum.

This policy shift has nothing to do with the demands of women in the public at large to have gender benders search women–if a woman wanted to be searched by a transgender person, she had that right. This is about establishing the right of men to manhandle women under the color of law.

This policy is about imposing on nonconsenting women the humiliation of being searched by a mentally disturbed man.

It is, indeed, state-sanctioned sexual assault.

Heads should roll.

None will.