Get ready to be angry
A disabled woman is arrested, her house searched with a warrant
Last night, while preparing to go on to Andrew Doyle’s Free Speech Nation to talk Girlguiding and the UK police, Sarah Phillimore told me that a disabled woman in Newport had been arrested and was being held in a cell for placing up feminist stickers. They also searched her home with a warrant.
The woman was released at 3.30am, without her mobile phone. She thankfully made it home safely on her mobility scooter ‘Dwayne’ and tweeted about her ordeal this morning.
Yesterday Sunday 23rd/01/22 I was arrested for hate crime. Gwent police saw me as an exceptional threat to the T community by posting stickers and posters that did not mention T once. They were feminist in content and, I felt, pleasingly informative to women and concerned
Re kids. I was kept in a cell with no natural light, my watch and phone taken, plus loads of stickers. They had a warrant and searched my house taking yet more posters etc eg this one. I was interviewed at around 1.30am. My meds were not given to me - I have severe bipolar 1.
As I was arrested, my left arm - in a splint was pushed upwards until I shouted in pain. When I was released at approx 3.30am I was left to travel through the centre of the city and up the very steep hill. They kept my phone so if Dwayne had broken down I would have had no way to contact OH for rescue. Disability rights are Human RIGHTS. Twansrights …..well let me get you a golden cell encrusted with diamonds and your very own house elf. I am on Bail. Conditional in that I don’t do stickering and postering in all of Newport. Only Newport
I can still do leafleting which I enjoy the most as Newport people love to talk. We can talk yr bleedin’ ear off clart. The bullshit complaints would have been hilarious if it weren’t so serious!
This is the same police force that had to apologise for their toxic, sexist culture, arresting a disabled woman for putting up stickers about domestic abuse and female prisoners. Meanwhile…
You can make your feelings known on the Gwent police Twitter page or their Facebook page. We’ll be following this story closely.
Women being killed = not offensive
Stickering about women being killed = offensive
Sounds about right. Fuck's sake.
As fly posting is only a summary offence (i.e. can only be prosecuted before a magistrate), it is not serious enough to enable a police officer to obtain a search warrant.
This means that, if a search warrant was given, it would have to have been on the basis that there were reasonable grounds for believing that an indictable offence had been committed. Presumably some sort of hate crime.
If there were no such reasonable grounds that a hate crime had actually been committed, then this may have been an illegal search of her property. And a particularly serious one if motivated by her perceived political opinions.