If the Trump administration in the US needed any further proof of “two-tiered policing” in the UK, it need look no further than the double standards applied by North Yorkshire Police.
In 2024 the then Acting Chief Constable, Elliot Foskett, issued an apology to the LGBTQ+ community for past discriminatory behaviour. But North Yorkshire Police has offered no apology to former police community support officer (PCSO) Luke Salmons, a committed Christian who was sacked that same year after a conversation about Gaza with a Muslim officer.
In February 2024, Foskett appeared in a video with Superintendent Ed Hayward-Noble, the force’s “strategic lead for LGBTQ+”. Oozing politically correct piety, Foskett intoned:
I am responding to a request for an apology relating to the way that North Yorkshire Police historically treated our LGBTQ+ communities. So as the Chief Constable it is for me to unreservedly apologise for the hurt and damage historically caused by North Yorkshire Police to our LGBTQ+ communities. We’re a very different force these days. We’ve changed a lot. Society has changed and we’ve changed with it. And I know that the actions of North Yorkshire Police way back then absolutely had a significant impact on our gay communities.
Salmons suffered protracted distress at the hands of the North Yorkshire woke police. In its story on June 5th, the Telegraph described his ordeal after he attended a race, religion and culture training session at the police headquarters in Northallerton in October 2024.
Salmons said:
The whole day was pretty much about Islam. At one point the trainers walked up and down the room for several minutes saying “Islam is a religion of peace” over and over again. It was bizarre. Then, a Muslim sergeant spoke about his faith and invited questions. It was made clear that there was no such thing as a bad question and we could speak freely. Someone asked him about why it was bad to depict images of Mohammed, then I asked him what, as a peaceful Muslim, he thought about the situation in Gaza, with Hamas and other terrorist groups carrying out atrocities in the name of Islam. We had a really good discussion and I asked him what he understood jihad to mean. There was no problem, I spoke to him privately at lunch and he asked me what books I had read about Islam. He said he would love to speak to me more, so we arranged to meet for a coffee at his police station.
In anticipation of the meeting, Salmons took a book with him to work called Answering Jihad – A Better Way Forward by Nabeel Qureshi, the New York Times bestselling author, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity. Two colleagues found it in his locker, photographed it and reported him as a “risk” to superiors. 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. He was later told he had been suspended. Salmons was suspended on full pay for months, and eventually resigned in April 2025. A disciplinary hearing was held in July 2025 at which he was formally dismissed for gross misconduct and placed on the College of Policing barred list, the Telegraph reported.
Salmons said:
It devastated me and my family. For months we lived in total uncertainty, with my reputation being shredded in secret. I resigned not because I had done anything wrong, but because the silence, the delay and the pressure became unbearable for my wife and daughters.
With the help of the Christian Legal Centre, he appealed against his dismissal. At a hearing in December last year, Tim Forber, the Chief Constable, overturned the decision before Salmons had even finished presenting his case. After beginning employment tribunal proceedings, Salmons reached an out-of-court settlement with the force in April. He said he had never had an apology from North Yorkshire Police.
The grudging statement the force issued to the Telegraph could not be more different in tone from Foskett’s grovelling apology to the LGBTQ+ communities:
North Yorkshire Police is an inclusive employer and respects the rights of all individuals to their beliefs. The expression of those beliefs must always be with due consideration of respect and courtesy in line with our force values and behaviours framework… He [Luke Salmons] was found to have committed gross misconduct before the chief constable upheld his appeal against the decision finding that while Mr Salmons had made colleagues feel uncomfortable at times, his actions did not represent gross misconduct nor a breach of any of the Police Staff Standards of Professional behaviour.
Who in their right mind could disagree with the US State Department’s X post on the murder of Henry Nowak: “Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilisational decline”?
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
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I wonder just how much you have to hate yourself, just how low your self-esteem has to be before you consider joining the “police”?
Perhaps they failed the interview to be a social worker so tried the police.
The country is being destroyed from within, and Starmers storm troopers are abling and abetting it. North Yorks Police already have a bad rep, so this clearly wont help, people are dying because of this crap.
I can tell you something. Here in France, the Gendarmes, the Police National and the CRS most definitely do not wear rainbow badges. They wear guns. And they’re serious, and can run a mile without breaking a sweat.
Likewise our Police Municipale (with, I suspect, exception of the last point).
“North Yorkshire Police is an inclusive employer and respects the rights of all individuals to their beliefs.” Unless of course those beliefs are not “in line with our force values”, in which case your inclusive employer will exclude you.
Since when has a police force had “values” which must be kow-towed to by all its employees, and why?
A police force’s values must and should simply be the upholding of the rule of law and the prevention, detection and prosecution of crime. That’s it.
Too difficult, all this rule of law stuff.
“…Mr Salmons had made colleagues feel uncomfortable at times…” The police often make the claim (quite rightly) that they are ones who run towards danger when everyone else is running away. And yet, these battle-hardened men and women “feel uncomfortable” when a colleague offers an opinion about Islam. This just beggars belief. These weasel words are now becoming the standard method of complaint to isolate and expel people who are courageous enough to engage in independent thought. If someone feels “uncomfortable” in such a safe office environment then they should not be in the police force (service?).
I doubt many “feel uncomfortable” who complain. It’s just a cowardly way to exercise power over others.
Exactly.
The police have become, very simply, the physical enforcers of a far-left ideology – the KGB on English soil. That now makes the police the enemy of true democracy. And the enemy of true democracy is the enemy of this country. So the battle lines have been drawn. All that’s now needed is for one side to realise they are at war.
How on earth does any organisation reconcile bending over in the direction of your choice to placate the rainbow people on one hand, with craven fear of triggering the sensibilities of the followers of the religion which will remain nameless. The two are diametrically opposed, so there seems to be a lot of opportunistic hypocrisy doing the rounds.
In leftist ideology everyone is the same.. John Lennons ‘Imagine’. Differences are the fault of the original sinner whitey, who sins through muh racism and intolerance… Meanwhile all privileged groups laugh behind their hands as they do invadery, groupy things and laugh at the tax slaves forced to provide for them.
What specifically did North Yorkshire police do to the LGBTQ+ community that they had to apologise?
Or was this intended as a demonstration of this Force’s submission to the new ideology?
An organisation cannot be easily captured in this way unless it has already lost its own original identity and sense of purpose. When it has lost this, in that existential vacuum the new ideology can fill the void.
The ex-vicar will be familiar with the gospel passage where Jesus of Nazareth relates a parable about the house swept and garnished. The Church of England, having lost its many purposes, has now been captured by the same ideology. As has every institution and so-called mainstream political party of the British state.
Your second sentence nails it.
Statism, State Fascism. Christianity is being targeted for eradication that much is obvious. The mentally ill perverts and lunatics with the ‘rainbow’ cult are just one animalistic and violent vector in this assault. The Police are in part just a Gestapo arm of this perverted deranged cult. Both need to be pulled down and salted. I wonder how many Queers and Perverts have cried and ripped their tunics over Henry Nowak?