Does the force fear feminists?

In February, Detective Constable Rachel Fletcher helped secure the conviction of the predatory pedophile Ross Jackson, who was jailed for 23 years for a catalog of child sexual abuse offenses. What no one outside court that day knew was that Fletcher had already been removed from public-facing duties as she was herself under investigation for gross misconduct. Northumbria police had nevertheless asked her to return to the case — “through gritted teeth”, in her telling — because without her the prosecution risked collapsing. Six months later, she was sacked. “I’m now on the barred list alongside Wayne Couzens and multiple rapist David Carrick,” she tells me. Her crimes, though, were of a rather different order: remarks deemed sexist and transphobic. Colleagues alleged that she repeatedly re