“I wanted to hang out with new people so was on Tinder. And it’s easier with Tinder Gold because you can just see who likes you,” she tells GLAMOUR.
To anyone unfamiliar, Tinder allows you to know who has ‘liked’ you if you like them in return. Once the ‘like’ is mutual, you can strike up conversation. Tinder Gold, a paid-for service, allows a you to see all the people who have ‘liked’ you without you having to ‘like’ them in return.
“I woke up one morning, went on Tinder, and realised there were so many officers. I thought, ‘what the f*ck?’”
Hollie Adams
Though none of the officers have actually spoken to Patsy via Tinder, the frequency of police appearing in the list of men who’d ‘liked’ her was uncanny: “They’re in chronological order. It was around 50, all in one segment, with maybe one or two other people in between.
“If it had been dispersed a bit more I could have thought it was a coincidence. And now I know that people can share profiles on Tinder, it doesn’t seem like an accident.”
Patsy also encountered difficulties when reporting one of many online death threats. The case is ongoing, so more details cannot be shared, but a female officer has already been given feedback for improvement after handling the initial report, Patsy says, with an insensitive line of questioning.
Despite repeated negative experiences of the police, Patsy is not, “100% on the logistics” of the defund the police movement: “One of my best friends is a police officer, and I have to constantly message her saying: ‘It’s not about you, I know you’re good’, but she was the one who told me to complain.”
What Patsy does want is for policing to change: “When you see war veterans who carry so much respect and honour, it should be like that. Policemen, though, f*cking hell. They’ve got a reputation within society for misogyny and racism.
“Imagine if teachers had a reputation for being peadophiles, you wouldn’t send your kids to school! And if there was a rumour about a teacher being a nonce, would you hire them? I wouldn’t, so why do we do that with police officers? It’s not hard!”
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, has ordered an enquiry into the systemic failures that enabled Wayne Couzens to remain as a police officer for so long, and the Met police has ordered a review into culture and standards. Patsy wants the reviews to lead to accountability:
“26 of Wayne Couzens’ colleagues have committed sex crimes” she explains, citing statistics showing offending over a five year period.
“It’s in their force and they’re turning at every angle trying to distract us. They’re still not taking accountability. They do it because they want people to trust them, but that’s the sort of tactic a manipulative boyfriend uses”
“If they do the work and say they’ve f*cked up and they’re really sorry, then we’ve got a chance of trusting the police again.”