After a person has been arrested and taken to a Police Station, they must be brought forthwith before the ‘gatekeeper’ of the Station – a hopefully experienced Custody Sergeant whose job it is to decide whether it is in fact lawful to continue to detain the arrested person. The Custody Sergeant also has important safeguarding duties towards the detained person in terms of ensuring their physical and mental health and facilitating their access to legal representation.
Custody Sergeants have sweeping powers over the arrestee’s person, property and liberty and it is therefore crucial for the maintenance of a democratically accountable Police Force that Custody Sergeants do not abuse this authority.
One of the powers which is granted to a Custody Sergeant over detainees is the power to ‘seize’ the detainee’s clothes, i.e. to order a strip search. This power is set out under Section 54(4) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 as follows –
(4) Clothes and personal effects may only be seized if the Custody Officer –
- believes that the person from whom they are seized may use them –(i) to cause physical injury to himself or any other person; (ii) to damage property; (iii) to interfere with evidence; or (iv) to assist him to escape; or
- has reasonable grounds for believing that they may be evidence relating to an offence.
In Davies v Chief Constable of Merseyside Police [2015] EWCA Civ 114 it was ruled that the removal of a detainee’s clothing items in any of the above circumstances fell under the protection of Code C, annexe A of the PACE Codes of Practice.
In this regard, Code C, paragraph 4.2 provides as follows – “Detainees may retain clothing and personal effects at their own risk unless the Custody Officer considers they may use them to cause harm to themselves or others, interfere with evidence, damage property, effect an escape, or they are needed as evidence.”
Whilst paragraph 10 of annexe A makes it clear that –
“A strip search may take place only if it is considered necessary to remove an article which a detainee would not be allowed to keep and the Officer reasonably considers the detainee might have concealed such an article. Strip searches shall not be routinely carried out if there is no reason to consider that articles are concealed”.
Sadly, I very often come across cases in which rather than using this ‘safeguarding’ power to order a strip search sparingly and as a last resort to avert the risk of self-harm for a particularly vulnerable individual, Custody Sergeants callously or lazily use the power to ‘punish’ ‘mouthy’ or non-compliant detainees – a cohort of people which of course includes a considerable proportion of those who know that they have been wrongfully arrested and are legitimately (verbally) protesting about this and/or trying to gather information in order to lodge a complaint.
I am presently dealing with an appeal to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) which involves a particularly egregious example of this form of abuse of power.
As the IOPC’s review is outstanding I will not identify either my client or the Force involved but here present the salient facts for your edification.
The background to this matter is that my client Vincent (who was born in Zimbabwe, but who has lived in the UK for many years) was wrongly arrested in 2022 after one Police Force failed to update the Police National Computer system (PNC) so as to confirm that a ‘curfew’ imposed upon Vincent as a bail condition had been lifted, leaving Officers of another Force to mistakenly believe that Vincent was in breach of that curfew when he was out and about, and to arrest him.
As the curfew had in fact been lifted by the Court as far back as 2020, Vincent was understandably annoyed by his 2022 arrest, particularly when his attempts to explain the true state of affairs fell on deaf ears, but he did not seek to physically resist arrest.
The CCTV footage from the Custody Suite shows Vincent being brought into the station – protesting that he had been unlawfully arrested, but certainly not behaving in a violent manner.
Vincent was in handcuffs, was offering no physical resistance to the multiple Officers surrounding him and on first arriving, leant casually against the Custody Desk. Whilst he was verbosely protesting his unlawful arrest, there was no suggestion of violence from him and indeed, whilst he attempted to gather the collar numbers of the Officers who had arrested him – in order to make a complaint – Vincent actually checked that there would be video evidence of what was occurring, which was hardly the behaviour of somebody who wanted to start a fight.
A mere 1 minute and 44 seconds then passed between the time Vincent was presented at the Custody Desk, to the time at which the Custody Sergeant directed the other Officers to take Vincent to a cell and strip him. Furthermore, the CCTV reveals that for the vast majority of that time, the Custody Sergeant was paying no attention to Vincent – and instead appeared to be looking at something on his mobile phone screen. The Custody Sergeant did not in fact attempt to engage with Vincent until less than 20 seconds before giving the Order that Vincent be stripped of his clothing.
Whilst it was true that Vincent was ignoring the Custody Sergeant for that period, it was a period of 19 seconds only – and it is apparent that Vincent was already engaged with trying to get the collar numbers of the Officers around him when the Custody Sergeant started speaking. In my view it was entirely unreasonable of the Custody Sergeant to ‘jump the gun’ like this and to order Vincent to be stripped without making a proper attempt to engage with him at the Custody Desk.
Of further note is the conversation which the CCTV footage demonstrates the Custody Sergeant had with his female colleague at the Custody Desk during the minutes immediately following Vincent’s removal to the cell. According to the Custody Record, the Sergeant authorised a strip search “to remove an article which the detainee is not allowed to keep on the grounds of the Officer has reasonable grounds for believing that a strip search is the only means of removing the item(s)”.
I believe that the Custody Sergeant’s conversation with his colleague demonstrates the true reason why he directed Vincent to be taken to a cell and stripped, and that reason had nothing to do with a genuine suspicion that our client had upon him an article that he should not be allowed to keep. Immediately following Vincent’s removal to the cell corridor, the Custody Sergeant can be heard stating “I didn’t want to listen to him anymore”. He agreed with his colleague’s comment that Vincent was “boring” and then went back to apparently watching television on his computer monitor (commenting on a news report from Kiev).
All of the above was in contravention of the Force’s own Custody and Detention Policy which injuncts the Custody Officer, even when dealing with a violent detainee (which Vincent was not) to “make all attempts to engage with the detainee before that person is placed in a cell”
In clear contravention of PACE and the Police Code of Practice, there was simply no reasonable attempt by the Custody Sergeant to properly engage or communicate with Vincent or address the genuine distress he was experiencing as a result of his unlawful arrest; the Officer gave Vincent less than 20 seconds of his attention before ordering him to the cells.
To me, the evidence is persuasive that the Sergeant ordered the strip search as a ‘punitive measure’ designed to stop Vincent from complaining about his arrest and born out of personal dislike of Vincent rather than any genuine safeguarding reasons. Indeed, any clothing items which might have posed a safeguarding risk – such as belts or socks – could have been removed without a strip search.
Notwithstanding the detailed video evidence available, the Police Force in question has dismissed Vincent’s complaint, deeming the Custody Sergeant’s behaviour acceptable. I beg to differ with this and have accordingly exercised my client’s right of review to involve the IOPC in this matter.
Whatever the ultimate decision of the IOPC however, it remains the case that what happened to Vincent is far from being a unique situation. Custody Sergeants frequently punish complaining or otherwise non-compliant detainees with entirely premature/ unnecessary strip search procedures; an exercise of power designed to break the person’s spirit through humiliation and degradation rather than to safeguard and protect them or anybody else.
I am proud to make it my job to hold such abusive officers to account to the full extent that the law allows and if you have suffered mistreatment in Police custody, such as an unjustified strip search, don’t hesitate to contact me for advice.
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