Janice Turner on the problems with Pride Policing:

In 2019, Stephen Ireland posted a film of himself at Surrey police HQ in Guildford beside a Jaguar patrol car customised with a swirling rainbow design and the name of the organisation he founded and controlled, Pride in Surrey (PiS). “This is what I will be riding around in today,” says an ecstatic Ireland, as the officer who will act as his chauffeur waves.

Ireland energetically cultivated Surrey police. He spoke on panels alongside officers, attended joint school visits, befriended its LGBT staff group. PiS was a “partner agency” on the force’s website. Most significantly, he was highly regarded by the then chief constable Gavin Stephens. After Surrey’s police and crime commissioner Lisa Townsend expressed gender critical views, Ireland launched a vicious campaign to have her sacked. Stephens, instead of offering her support, told her to apologise because Ireland “is a friend of Surrey police”.

Now that “friend” is serving 24 years in prison for raping a 12-year-old boy. Ireland had messaged his partner David Sutton, 27, (jailed for four and a half years) to say he’d found a “14-year-old baby” on Grindr who “wants to play with men’s bodies”. Discovering he was even younger, Ireland said: “OK, we just have to keep it a secret.” The couple smoked methamphetamine with the boy, described in court as “highly vulnerable”, filmed the rape and added it to their bank of paedophilic images.

I still, for the millionth time, have to wonder why Surrey police was so cuddly with Pride in Surrey and not with women in Surrey.

Paedophiles don’t all creep in the shadows: some know it’s safer to loom large on the landscape. That master of hiding in plain sight, Jimmy Savile, held a Friday morning breakfast club for West Yorkshire coppers at his Leeds flat. After his crimes were exposed, detectives said his friendly openness closed their minds to rumours. Likewise, it is not suggested Surrey police knew about Ireland’s crimes — its eventual investigation was thorough — but that its institutional approval acted for years as a protective forcefield.

Plus he’s a guy and guys are trustworthy, while women…well, you know.