Luke Salmons lost his job as a police community support officer (PCSO) with the North Yorkshire force and was barred from policing after a conversation about Gaza with a Muslim officer.

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.

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. The officer happily discussed the issue with him and invited him to chat further over coffee after the session.

But within two days he had been suspended for gross misconduct by an inspector who told him: “I don’t like your beliefs.”

Salmons told the Telegraph: “I loved my job and I was good at it. I was well respected as a PCSO and my colleagues said they loved working with me and couldn’t understand what was happening.

“But an overzealous inspector took against me and that was the end of my career, even though I had done nothing wrong.”

On Thursday, the Telegraph reported how police officers in the force that failed Henry Nowak felt “controlled and pressured” during diversity training.

Salmons, a father of two from Harrogate, spent 20 years working in construction before he decided to apply for a job as a PCSO because, he said: “I’m passionate about the community, partly because of my faith, and I wanted to give more to the community.”

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.

Then in the spring of 2024 he was asked by a superintendent to write an article about Easter for the internal intranet site “because of my religion”, only for an inspector to intervene and tell him he could not make any reference to the Bible.

His personal views were then questioned after an online training session about the growing problem of inappropriate sexual behaviour by minors towards other minors, during which participants were asked to give feedback.

Salmons suggested that if children were raised in solid family homes and taught right from wrong the problem would decrease, which resulted in the trainer reporting him to his sergeant who told him he could not talk about his morals in the workplace.

Matters came to a head in October 2024 when Salmons attended a race, religion and culture training session at the police headquarters in Northallerton.

He 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.

“I believed I was on safe ground when the training sessions invited open discussion. I quickly discovered that questioning Islam is now treated as ‘wrongthink’ within North Yorkshire Police.”

In anticipation of the meeting, he 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.

He said: “There is no way that inspector would have taken a Muslim officer into a room and said ‘I don’t like your beliefs’.”

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.

He 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, and 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.