Police Scotland offered high street gift vouchers worth up to £360 each to members of an LGBT ‘citizens’ panel’ which called for officers to ‘kindly’ respect criminals’ pronouns.
The service set up the group of 20 people, recruited via LGBT networks, to represent ‘many diverse identities’ and improve the ‘safety and wellbeing of people, places and communities’.
Members were asked to ‘share an object that represented their impressions or feelings about the discussions’ – and trigger warnings were issued ahead of potentially ‘distressing’ conversations.
Other proposals included compulsory participation in pro-LGBT activities for officers who are ‘more prone’ to having homophobic or transphobic views.
Last night former senior officers condemned the exercise as a ‘self-indulgent act of virtue-signalling’ – and said police should be taught about ‘crime investigation rather than what different rainbow flags mean’.
Scottish Tory deputy leader Rachael Hamilton said: ‘At a time when officer numbers are falling and frontline resources are stretched after years of SNP cuts, the public expect policing to focus on tackling crime and protecting communities – not becoming distracted by political activism or virtue-signalling initiatives.’
Members of the LGBTQI+ Police Scotland citizens' panel were handed up to £360 in high street vouchers
The panel was launched after Chief Constable Jo Farrell made a public apology in 2024 to LGBT communities ‘for the pain caused through injustices’ including ‘enforcing laws which criminalised love and identity’.
It recommended that officers policing Pride events should be in uniform and those who are present as part of a Police Scotland float or as individuals ‘should be free to wear T-shirts or similar which identify their connection with Police Scotland’.
The panel recommended that police ‘ask for pronouns and understand that people may need to be addressed as something different than their legal ID’. Members said police ‘must use the name and pronouns they are told’.
The citizens’ panel also called for the creation of a permanent panel to ‘monitor’ and hold police ‘accountable’ for their interactions with the LGBT community.
Panel members also said ‘officers more prone to anti-LGBTQIA+ views’ should be ‘integrated thoroughly and compulsorily in the pro-LGBTQIA+ activities the police is carrying out’.
One former senior officer, who did not want to be named, said: ‘This seems like yet another self-indulgent act of virtue-signalling by Police Scotland.’
Former Police Scotland superintendent Martin Gallagher said: ‘Maybe asking for the description of an assailant should be a cop’s priority when speaking to a witness, not the latest fad.
‘If we focused on these basics, rather than ploughing resources and cash from dwindling government allocations into disputed causes, maybe we could be teaching our cops about crime investigation rather than what different rainbow flags mean today, which so often changes tomorrow.’
Dave Marshall, a former Police Scotland chief superintendent and author of The Fall of Policing, said: ‘By engaging in identity politics of this nature, Police Scotland risks reinforcing the perception that it is prioritising one group over others.’
Chief Superintendent Nicky Russell, Tayside divisional commander and chairman of the Citizens’ Panel Strategic Oversight Group, said it was ‘humbling to have been part of this work’.