Bedfordshire Police vow to take action if there is "blatant" discrepancy between declared gender and what custody officer believes

Bedfordshire Police will take the “most appropriate” action if there is a “blatant” discrepancy between a declared gender and what a custody officer believes is the case, the chief constable has said.

But it’s not an issue where the force has encountered any difficulties, he added.

During the latest police and crime commissioner (PCC) & chief constable accountability meeting (December 18) the PCC, Festus Akinbusoye, said a resident asked about the force’s policy on collecting a person’s gender when someone is in custody.

“So sex at birth and on their birth certificate, or the gender that they declare themselves as?” he asked.

“Obviously this is born out of concerns that this could potentially skew crime data in terms of gender, whether it is male perpetrated or female perpetrated.

“And also in the case where, for example, someone comes to custody saying that they are female but they still have male genitalia and they insist on being searched by a female officer before they are detained,” he said.

Trevor Rodenhurst, the chief constable, said: “So essentially we ask a person to declare their gender, but also our custody staff also indicate what they believe the gender to be.

“If there needs to be any kind of situation where maybe there’s a search and therefore you want someone of the same sex, if there’s a blatant discrepancy between what the person’s saying and what we believe, then we will do what we think is most appropriate in the circumstances.

“What I would say is with our custody facilities it doesn’t matter what gender someone is. Whilst it is a cell block effectively these are en-suite facilities that give an individual the dignity and privacy that they need regardless of their sex.

“Whoever’s asking this question I can foresee why you need to have a policy and you need to know the answer to that but this is not a real issue.

“It’s not an issue that we’ve encountered any difficulties with to date, but we do have that process in place for that reason,” he said.