The Times on the police abuse of Jennifer Swayne:

Jennifer Swayne, 53, was detained for more than 12 hours after placing posters around Newport that made claims about trans women in prisons and said “humans never change sex” and that men in dresses should stay out of women’s spaces.

She accused Gwent police of operating “like the Stasi” after they raided her home and took a book of essays on “the theory and practice of transgendering children”. Edited by Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans, an academic previously no-platformed by university students, the book contends that politics rather than science accounts for the rise in the number of transgender children. Swayne said that police did not say why they took the book, which contained her handwritten notes.

I haven’t seen reports of those posters before; at least these make a little more sense of claims that the posters were about trans issues. Do they make more sense of claims of transphobia? Of course not.

Fair Cop, which campaigns against the criminalisation of free speech, accused Gwent police of “unlawful interference”. Harry Miller, the group’s co-founder who won a landmark legal victory against another force when he was accused of alleged transphobic tweets, said that Gwent police were “out of control”.

Miller claimed that the posters that Swayne put up around the Welsh town were a “political statement” that did not come near the criminal threshold.

I wonder if the Gwent police have ever arrested a male person for misogynist graffiti.

Sarah Phillimore, also of Fair Cop, said that the removal of the book was “concerning” and she awaited a knock on the door by police because she also owned it.

Seriously what possible business can police have seizing an academic book from someone’s bookshelf?

Superintendent Vicki Townsend of Gwent police said: “We’ve received several reports in relation to posters containing offensive material appearing in Newport between October and January. Officers on patrol in Newport saw a woman spraying stickers to two lamp posts.” The force refused to detail the nature of the stickers while the investigation was continuing.

I daresay the Gwent police have received several reports of rape, too, but cops don’t seem to dash into action in quite the same way for rape reports. I get that finding stickers on lampposts is a lot easier than finding solid evidence that Mr X raped Ms Y, but that’s not actually a reason to come down like a ton of bricks on women who put stickers on lampposts.

Swayne said they were posters she had made at home. Phrases included “no child is born in the wrong body, humans never change sex”; “respect women’s spaces”; and “Woman = Adult Human Female”. Her other posters said that women were in danger in prisons from transgender sex offenders and called for “no men in women’s prisons”. One asked: “Are you happy for your 13-year-old daughter to shower next to an adult man, yes or no?”

Imagine being a cop strolling around Newport and seeing a bunch of anti-racism posters on lampposts. Would it seem like a good idea to pounce on the first person you saw putting up anti-racism posters? No? What if the force had received “several complaints” from racists? Then would it become a matter of urgency? Just wondering.

Swayne said that police did not tell her why they had taken the transgender book — a collection of essays entitled Transgender Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body.

Brunskell-Evans, who edited the book, said that the police appeared to be operating within a “very narrow, partisan view of what it is legitimate to have on your bookshelf”.

“That is dangerous for liberal democracy. A book that has been published, is in the public domain and has been for years, and does not break the law in any way whatsoever, should be of no concern to the police.”

We’re allowed to read books. We’re allowed to have books on our shelves. We don’t have to ask the police for permission first.

Gwent police said it had received six complaints about offensive posters. The force said that it was required to respond when members of the public reported they were offended by posters.

Wait. What does “respond” mean? Respond to what? Respond by arresting the first person they see putting up posters? But the complaints are necessarily about other posters, ones that were already there, not new ones that are being put up after the police got the complaints. How can they know the complaints would apply to new posters that didn’t exist when the complaints were made?

Gwent police said that it had put out a public safety message a few days before the arrest because it had been reported that stickers had “sharp objects” attached behind them.

Finally a news source manages to say “it had been reported that” instead of just reporting it themselves. Apparently this basic journalistic caution is unknown to the BBC.