Police officers quizzed a pensioner in her home on suspicion of a hate crime after she stopped in the street to take a photo of a sticker which said: ‘Keep males out of women-only spaces.’
The sticker had been placed on to a LGBT+ pride poster which had the slogan Stand By Your Trans. Officers told the 73-year-old retired social worker that she had been identified from CCTV footage.
The woman told The Mail on Sunday she was ‘in a state of shock’ when officers arrived at her door.
Last night, the woman said she had stopped to take a photo with her phone because she agreed with its message that transgender women – who were born male – should not be allowed into women-only spaces such as changing rooms. She did not share the image on social media and only took the photo to show to her partner when she got home.
‘They gave me a long lecture about the sensitivity of the issue, and how something like this could cause harassment and alarm to the community,’ she said. ‘They were investigating it as a hate crime, which is outrageous. I was in a state of shock.’
West Yorkshire has the second-highest crime rate in the UK, but more than 90 per cent of cases go unsolved in the area, according to official figures.