Director of group hired to train PSNI dubbed police ‘racist oppressor pigs who deserve the wall’

Alexa Moore has variously described police as racists, fascists, and pigs, and has been vocally insistent that they must not be allowed to take part in LGBT pride marches.

The same individual has also justified the use of violence in response to police brutality, and appears to have suggested that officers should be lined up against a wall and shot.

Trangender NI, the group of which Alexa Moore is director, was hired to deliver a mandatory training course to 24 PSNI custody sergeants at the end of 2018.

It was also hired to train Department of Justice (DoJ) employees involved in young offender work in 2019.

(More details of this training below).

Transgender NI is not a charity, but it is a company-limited-by-guarantee (basically a non-profit outfit).

Alexa Moore – who was originally male, and is listed as ‘Mx Alex Moore’ in the company documents – is one of three directors, the others being Ellen Murray and ‘Mx’ Rain James Watt.

Ellen Murray has been critical of the police too in the past.

For example, they recently said that a Twitter clip from law enforcement in Miami, picturing officers showing off their police bicycles, is “a glorification of police violence” (coming in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minnesota);

They shared a thread purporting to show US police “beating and shooting people for sport – literally an epidemic of state violence” and said that “the police want to be violent against protesters and for them to suffer”.

And, when promoting an upcoming event in NI they told attendees “there will be no representation of police officers, which is uncomfortable and/or dangerous for many marginalised people in the community”.

However, the comments from Alexa Moore – aged 20 – are both far stronger and far more numerous (and there is no suggestion that those views are identically-held by the other two directors).

There are too many to cite in full, but here is a small selection:

June 2020:

~ “I look forward to demilitarization and police abolition in our future.”

~ “It’s not *just* the US police & political class that have this problem. Our police are racist too. maybe they’re better at hiding it... But they are and we’re just as in need of abolition as the US.”

~ At a recent Londonderry ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstration, Alexa Moore wrote that officers were “bottlenecking attendees and deliberately attempting to break down [social distancing] for propaganda purposes”, and were “setting out to make primarily the black & brown organisers of this protest feel unsafe”.

January 2020:

~ “One of the most crucial aspects of criminal justice reform that simply *isn’t on the agenda* is reducing police numbers. The overpolicing of poor communities, the targeting of homeless and vulnerable people, would be drastically reduced if there were simply less officers.”

April 2019:

~ “The police and criminal justice system in western societies exist to uphold and maintain patriarchy. They consistently revictimise those who have experienced patriarchal violence, and often are direct perpetrators of that violence.”

November 2018:

~ “A party which would hire more cops is not a party which will deliver trans liberation.”

September 2018:

~ “Absolute pigs. These the same cops y’all bend over backwards to support?” (responding to a video of protestors describing an eviction which happened in the Republic of Ireland)

August 2018:

~ “Seeing armed police casually walking around makes me feel... *so* unsafe and uncomfortable.”

July 2018:

~ “Pride is nothing without intersectionality. If we abandon working class queers, queer sex workers, queer folks who require abortions and fight for bodily autonomy, in favour of inviting the oppressive cops in, what kind of movement is it?”

June 2018:

~ “No cops, no Tories, no fascists at pride.”

~ “Imagine thinking cops are good like just imagine that.”

May 2018:

~ “Being a sex worker is not by any means morally comparable to being a corporate financier or a cop. The former deserve support, the latter two deserve the wall.”

(The News Letter asked Transgender NI if there was some alternative intended meaning other than putting police against a wall and shooting them; it did not offer any).

April 2018:

~ (In response to a Belfast Telegraph article about Gerry Adams) “For the record, I completely agree with Adams on this one. Violence can be justified – for instance in resistance to police brutality, in attempts to seize the means of production and the private property of the wealthy, etc.”

~ Older tweets refer to police as “fascists” and “disgusting racist trash”, suggest the police cause more crimes than they solve, and some contain the acronym “ACAB” (standing for “all cops are bastards”).

One tweet also criticises the lobby group Stonewall for not being radical enough, saying: “Stonewall and their representatives continue to disappoint and stray farther and farther from their namesakes. We used to throw bricks at transphobic police, now we endorse and support transphobic politicians. Sickening.”

GROUP DOES NOT RESPOND TO ANY QUESTIONS:

Repeated bids were made to obtain comment from Transgender NI, Ellen Murray, and Alexa Moore, but all of the News Letter’s enquiries went unanswered.

It is therefore not known which member of Transgender NI actually delivered the PSNI and Department of Justice training directly.

But here are the details which are known.

The course delivered by Transgender NI to the PSNI was in November 2018.

It was part of the custody sergeant course, and was compulsory for all officers new to the role. About 24 officers took part, and Transgender NI was paid £1,030.

The training covered the language which Transgender NI wants police to use, and how it wants them to behave.

Among the claims made by Transgender NI (which it declined to back up) is that about 1% of the population is transgender (read more on that here – Activists claim NI has as many transgender people as ethnic minorities ).

The Department of Justice training took the form of two sessions in November 2019.

The total cost was £900.

In addition, other agencies known to have used Transgender NI to train their staff are Queen’s University Belfast and Unison the trade union.

Alexa Moore last Wednesday had a meeting with health minister Robin Swann to discuss transgender issues.

Transgenderism does not simply mean someone who has undergone a ‘sex change’ operation. Instead activists use the term to mean that anyone who “feels like” a man or a woman truly is a man or a woman, regardless of the physical evidence. They also believe there are multiple genders, such as neutrois, two-spirit, genderqueer, and an array of others.

POLICE AND GOVERNMENT OFFER NO REJECTION OF COMMENTS:

The anti-police comments were put to the PSNI and the DoJ.

Neither of them condemned or distanced themselves from the comments expressed.

The PSNI said in a statement: “Hate crime in all its forms, is totally unacceptable.

“It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to ensure that we live in a society where diversity is respected and we work closely with a range of support services and partner agencies to support victims and make it easier for them to report.

“This training provide by Transgender NI to the Police College in 2018 is indicative of that close partnership working and enables us to serve and protect our communities better when we understand their concerns.”

The DoJ said: “In 2019 Woodlands Juvenile Justice Centre reviewed its policy in regards transgender young people.

“In line with procurement procedures, TransgenderNI were commissioned by Woodlands Juvenile Justice Centre to provide transgender awareness training to its staff, which highlighted legal status and support for transgender young people entering Woodlands.”

READ MORE FROM THIS REPORTER:

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