NYP Custody Scandal: Baird Report Vindicates NYE

NYP Custody Scandal: Baird Report Vindicates NYE

by TIM HICKS

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Introduction: The North Yorkshire Police (NYP) Custody Scandal

Regular readers will know that the NYE has been doggedly pursuing a gang of NYP officers who serve in NYP’s Custody Suites, who – according to a Custody Inspection – have been looking at women detainees while they are semi-naked in the cells.

The presence of a male Officer in a cell with a woman in a state of undress when there is no need for it is a form of sexual abuse and a despicable abuse of authority. If the detainees were underage, it would be paedophilism.

So, in my view, the male Officers that enter cells and gawped at undressed female detainees should have been arrested and charged with voyeurism in the normal way, as should the Custody Sergeants that allowed this despicable behaviour to occur.

Yet no action has been taken.

On the 18^th of July 2024, the Dame Vera Baird KC Report on abuse of women in Custody Suites by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) was published. Her Report has raised many of the same concerns about treatment of women in GMP Custody Suites as the NYE has been raising since 2022, about abuse of women in NYP Custody Suites.

The Baird Report

Dame Vera Baird was formerly the Victims’ Commissioner for England & Wales. Her inquiry was commissioned by Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, following public concern after women made multiple allegations of abuse in GMP Custody Suites. It covers arrest, custody, strip-searching, intimate searches and clothes removal.

The Report has essentially upheld these allegations and revealed a horrific culture of abuse of female detainees in GMP.

Dame Vera Baird raised concerns that strip-searching was used as a “weapon of control”. Many victims of abuse by Police Officers gave evidence that they believe they were strip-searched to humiliate and punish them.

The Baird Report can be read in full here. It contains harrowing accounts of women who were abused while in GMP custody. A few examples:

• A domestic abuse victim awaiting a hysterectomy who was left sitting in her own blood in a cell for 16 hours without medication or feminine products.
• Another victim who was a victim of a domestic violence attack was unlawfully arrested and strip-searched ‘completely naked’ and later charged with malicious communications over her desperate phones calls to the police pleading for help.
• Another woman was strip-searched in a room with a glass door near the custody suite through which any passing male officer could see her. The inquiry concluded the strip-search was unlawful.

GMP response to the Baird Report is here: https://www.gmp.police.uk/news/greater-manchester/news/news/2024/july/gmp-response-to-the-dame-vera-bairds-report-into-the-treatment-of-people-in-custody/

As a result of the Baird Report GMP has been forced to improve controls over strip searches, the same reform the NYE is campaigning for by NYP.

Responses of Mayor Burnham of GMP compared to the responses of Chief Constable Forber, Mayor Skaith and Deputy Mayor Coles of NYP.

Chief Constable Forber of NYP (pictured above) will not comment on the allegations the NYE has been making about abuse of women in NYP custody suites since 2022. He has been completely supported in this decision by the former Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner Zoë Metcalfe and then by the Mayor of York and North Yorkshire, David Skaith.

Deputy Mayor Jo Coles

Mayor Skaith and his appointee Deputy Mayor Jo Coles (Pictured above) are responsible for holding NYP to account. They do not deny that there has been sexual abuse of vulnerable women by NYP Officers. They have simply responded to these allegations -and others which are even more serious- by refusing to comment on them, thereby evading their duty to tackle it.

If you or I went into the ladies changing rooms in a gym and looked at the women while they were undressed, we would be arrested for voyeurism. Yet NYP Custody Officers who have been behaving in a similar fashion have been protected. It appears that because these offences are committed by Police Officers within a Police Station on vulnerable female detainees, they can abuse women with impunity.

The NYP officers who have been ogling semi-naked women detainees in the cells are probably still working in Custody Suites and probably still abusing women in this way, because they are operating in a culture of impunity, fostered by the refusal of the Chief Constable, Commissioner, Mayor and Deputy Mayor to take action.

Conversely, Mayor Burnham’s response to the Baird report is here.

In his response he emphasises that he takes his duty to hold the Police to account extremely seriously and that he has ordered that GMP must reform. Exactly the response that the public expect from Deputy Mayor Coles, but which has not been forthcoming.

That is why GMP will be reformed and women will be protected, but in North Yorkshire women will continue to be abused by pervert Police Officers in NYP Custody Suites.

Mayor Burnham’s Response

Mayor Andy Burnham’s response to the Baird Report can be viewed here:

Right of Reply

If you are mentioned in this article and do not agree with the views expressed in it, or if you wish to correct any factual inaccuracy, please let me know using the letters@nyenquirer.uk email address and your views and a correction will be published if appropriate.