"Safe Space", Wrong Question
How a good British bobbie lost his job after believing a diversity trainer who said questions were welcome.
A Christian police support officer was sacked after he asked questions about Islam in a diversity training session.
He later won an appeal against his dismissal but has never received an apology from the force where he said a “culture of fear” existed among officers who were terrified of being fired for saying the wrong thing.
Mr Salmons, 46, told The Telegraph that a training day on race, religion and culture turned into an “indoctrination” session as trainers chanted “Islam is a religion of peace” and discussed white privilege.
Having been encouraged to ask questions in what staff were told was a safe space, he asked a Muslim officer about his views on terrorist attacks by Islamist groups including Hamas.
Mr Salmons said: “There is a culture of fear – people are scared to say anything or ask anything in case they get pulled up for it. Even the sergeant said to me, ‘sit on your hands and just sign the piece of paper to say you’ve done the course’.
The next day, he was hauled into a meeting with a female inspector who told him: “I don’t like your beliefs,” and told him to hand in his police ID and go home.
During his eight-year policing career he received a commendation from the chief constable for the way he handled a “horrific” incident involving a person’s safety, and received a rare “outstanding” grade in a professional development review.
A police community support officer is mandated to attend a training session, aka group exercise in ideological compliance, with trainers walking up and down the room repeating, “Islam is a religion of peace.” This is already a bad sign. Any proposition that requires chanting has ceased to be education and has entered the territory of the village drum circle, the corporate hostage video, or the final stage of fox hypnosis before the rabbit enclosure is opened for “community engagement.”
Ironically, the session was allegedly presented as a place where questions could be asked. The mammal asked questions. Two days later, he was told, “I don’t like your beliefs,” and was shown the door.
“I don’t like your beliefs.”
Two colleagues had searched his locker, found a book entitled Answering Jihad by Nabeel Qureshi, a former Muslim, photographed it, and reported him as a “risk.” A book in a locker. Not a knife. Not a bomb. Not a manifesto saying “Operation Badger Dawn begins at 0700.” A book. The printed object. The ancient rectangular predator of the modern compliance officer.
This is how soft totalitarian systems train their citizens. Nobody has to ban curiosity outright. They simply make curiosity administratively dangerous. They create a “safe space” in which everyone learns, very quickly, that safety belongs to the script, never to the speaker. Ask the approved question and you are brave. Ask the real question and you are a risk.
Then there is the sergeant who advised him to “sit on your hands and just sign the piece of paper to say you’ve done the course.” This may be the most honest sentence in the entire case. Sit on your hands. Sign the paper. Keep your head down. Do not think. Do not ask. Do not notice the chanting. Do not mention that “safe space” appears to mean “pre-disciplinary evidence-gathering zone.”
The modern institution does not need citizens. It needs mammals who can complete the module.
The public thinks, or used to think, that the police are being trained to police. Often, they are being trained to be policed. And the result is exactly what Salmons describes: a culture of fear.
Meanwhile, the ordinary public looks on and wonders why the people who are supposed to deal with violence, theft, rape gangs, antisocial behaviour, and actual public danger seem increasingly preoccupied with internal speech hygiene. The answer is simple. The institution has learned to fear the training room more than the street.
A criminal may punch you.
HR can erase your career.
That is the hierarchy now. The fox may be outside the coop, but the compliance officer is already in the henhouse measuring the emotional impact of the alarm bell.
Salmons later won his appeal and reached an out-of-court settlement. Still, no apology arrived.
Of course not. Apologies imply wrongdoing. Institutions prefer “lessons have been learned,” a phrase that means nobody has learned anything except how to phrase the next mistake more carefully.
The true lesson will not appear in the official paperwork. It will be learned quietly by every officer in the room.
Do not ask the question.
Do not trust the safe space.
Do not believe the trainer.
Do not assume friendly conversation protects you.
Do not think that commendations, good service, professional reviews, courage, competence, or decency will matter once the machine smells unauthorised belief.
Sit on your hands.
Sign the paper.
Return to the street.
Pretend the chanting was normal.
Mr Salmons now works as a senior housing officer for a homelessness charity on a lower salary than the £36,000 he was earning as a PCSO.
£36,000 after eight years of outstanding service and documented bravery? Why would anyone with that level of character and competence work dangerous shifts for that sort of money, only to be dragged into a Maoist struggle session with name badges and chanting? He is better off working for his charity on less money, rather than being humiliated by the managerial priesthood for asking a question.
And so British policing gets worse, one decent lost bobbie at a time.
Editor’s note: Comments are switched off because Canada has laws against saying true things too plainly.
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