An animal rights activist accidentally recorded a cop degrading a trans woman after her bodycam was confiscated during a protest. Three years later, she has shared the recording online.

In 2023, Gemma Barnes was protesting outside the police station in the U.K. city of Norwich, located in Norfolk County, after police decided not to prosecute a man whom surveillance footage caught seeming to intentionally run over a pigeon with his mobility scooter before returning to beat it to death with his walking stick.

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Barnes alleged cops pushed her to the ground, arrested her, and took her bodycam, according to The Mirror. She and another protester who was arrested were ultimately acquitted. When she received her bodycam back, it was clear the officers had no idea it had been recording their conversations in the aftermath of her arrest.

Barnes uploaded the entire almost 5-hour recording to YouTube this week, after posting a snippet last year on Instagram. She told The Mirror that when she first found the recording, she couldn’t believe how long it was. “As I kept listening, I realized the magnitude of their cock-up. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The incompetence of it is unbelievable.”

The protester arrested alongside Barnes was transgender, and in the recording, a cop can reportedly be heard calling that person “The pink-haired thing, whatever that was, they/them.” 

The recording is riddled with racist comments, jokes about violence, and insults to Barnes, who an officer called “an absolute f**king waste of space.” 

Barnes is now suing Norfolk Constabulary over both the comments made on the recording and how police handled her and other protestors in 2023. That year, she posted a photo of bruises up and down her legs, claiming they were put there by the officers that day. In March 2026, Norfolk Constabulary’s Professional Standards Department responded to a complaint filed by Barnes by mandating three officers undergo “reflective practice.” She said it isn’t enough, which is why she’s suing.

In a statement to The Mirror, Barnes’s lawyer, John Hagan, slammed the police for acting “gleeful” in the recording about using violence against Barnes. 

“Frankly, the whole atmosphere is akin to a school in which the teachers are absent and the bullies have taken over,” Hagan said. “What is perhaps equally shocking to what is revealed on the ‘candid camera’, with which the police recorded their sordid comments, is their behavior in the full light of day.”