This article examines the unlawful use of Section 19 PACE by police officers to seize mobile phones from people filming them, focusing on the case of Natalie, who was arrested, handcuffed, detained for 47 minutes and had her phone confiscated while recording her sister’s arrest in the street. It explains that filming police in public is lawful and that Section 19—an evidence-seizure power tied to officers being lawfully on “premises”—does not justify taking a phone on a public highway or stopping someone from recording. The case resulted in an admission of liability and a £25,000 settlement for unlawful arrest, detention and injury.
Content Authenticity Statement
100% of this week’s blog post was generated by me, the human.
Early this month, I blogged about how Police misuse legislation in order to claim that they have power over ordinary citizens in situations where no power exists. In that article I was specifically commenting on Police misuse of Section 17 of the Police & Criminal Evidence, very often claimed to be the legal basis for them bashing in a front door to “save life or limb” when in reality they know that there is no ‘life or death’ emergency.
Police Misuse of Section 19 PACE: Can Officers Seize Your Phone for Filming?
In this week’s blog post I will address another endemic Police misuse of legislation: Officers purporting to use Section 19 of PACE to seize mobile phones which are being used to film them.
Is It Legal to Film Police in Public? Your Rights Explained
Through the lens of the recently settled case of one of my clients I will answer the following questions –
- Is it legal to film Police Officers?
- Can the Police use Section 19 of PACE to seize mobile phones?
– and demonstrate the level of compensation that can be recovered when the supposed guardians of the law, fail to heed it.
Case Study: Unlawful Police Arrest and Illegal Seizure of a Mobile Phone
In June 2023 my client Natalie, a Civil Service manager of exemplary character, was at her home in Merseyside, when she saw her sister being arrested by the Police in the road outside, following her sister having been involved in a dispute with a neighbour.
My client went outside to investigate and began recording events on her phone, whilst keeping her distance from the Officers. She did not attempt to interfere with the arrest, or obstruct officers, she was merely cataloguing what was happening to her sister: every citizen’s right in the digital “Phone Age” in which we now live.
Suddenly and without warning, a male Police Officer grabbed Natalie’s left wrist and left upper arm and said “I’m seizing that phone under Section 19 of PACE, I believe its got evidence of an offence, pass me the phone”.
Shocked, my client resisted this ‘Police mugging’, whereupon the Officer told her that she was “under arrest for resisting arrest”.
Other male and female Officers now ‘piled in’ and Natalie was forcefully handcuffed to the rear, whilst being forced face-down onto the bonnet of a Police car, and her mobile phone was wrenched from her grip. She immediately began to experience pain and discomfort in both of her wrists and numbness in her hands; a reminder of how handcuffs are not just ‘ornaments’, the badge of a Police detainee, but are active weapons in the Police arsenal, gripping and squeezing and causing pain through their pressure and tightness, and their should never be used without necessity, although they so habitually are.
A bystander asked if filming in public was not allowed, to which one of the male Officers asserted, “We seize any mobile device that’s being used to record, it’s capturing evidence, an offence”. My client quite reasonably responded to this by telling the first Officer that she could have sent him the video, pointing out “All you had to do was ask”.
Natalie complained to one of the Officers about the pain she was in from the handcuffs, which she told him were “really cutting into me”. The Officer callously replied: “They’re not designed to be comfortable – because you’ve been actively resisting, I can’t risk loosening them.” This is the very definition of adding insult to injury.
Only after Natalie continued to report that she was experiencing “burning” and that her arm was “going dead”, in the context of her having previously had ulnar nerve surgery to her right arm, did the Police condescend to remove and adjust her handcuffs – re-handcuffing Natalie in the somewhat less degrading position of her hands being in front of her.
Natalie was then escorted to a Police carrier van, where the first Officer asked her if she understood why she had been arrested. My client told him that she did not at all understand, and again asserted that if the Officer wanted her phone footage, he could have just asked for it. The Officer threateningly replied “If you’re going to be difficult, I’ll take you to Custody”.
Unsurprisingly, however (because in reality, no offence had been committed), Natalie was now advised that she was being de-arrested and her handcuffs were removed. She had been unlawfully detained for approximately 47 minutes, although owing to the pain and public humiliation the Police had subjected her to, it felt a lot longer than that.
When my client then asked for her phone back, the Officer who had arrested her replied “It’s ours now” and said that she might get it back in six months. The Officer showed no compassion or concern at all for the significant disruption this would cause to my client’s work and personal life.
It was not until the following month, and after Natalie had proactively raised a number of complaints, that she was ‘allowed’ to come and collect her phone from a local Police Station.
Upon collection of the phone, Natalie noted that she had over 30 voice messages, one of which was from a local Walk-in-Centre where she had attended for treatment following her being assaulted by the Officers as described above. The message was now several days old. When my client belatedly made contact, she was advised that following a review of an x-ray which had been taken of her left wrist a week after this incident, and which had initially been thought to be clear, a fracture had in fact been identified and she now needed to go to hospital for further advice.
Did Police Have Legal Power Under Section 19 PACE to Stop Filming, or to Seize Her Phone?
The short answer to both of these questions is “no.”
As I explained in an earlier blog post about this case –
- There is no law that prevents you from filming the Police (in exactly the same way that they will habitually film you, body worn cameras now being a daily part of Police kit), and nor should there ever be as long as we uphold our democratic tradition of Police Officers as citizens-in-uniform.
- The Police can claim to be using the power granted to them by Section 19 of the Police & Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) to seize your phone – as they did to Natalie – but such a use of that power is almost certainly illegitimate, as I will explain below. As in the case of Police misuse of Section 17 powers for forced entry to homes, I strongly suspect that a lot of Officers know that Section 19 does not encompass the seizure that they want to make – but do it anyway, thinking that many of the public will, understandably, be brow-beaten by the combined threat of legislative chapter-and-verse and real violence (bureaucracy and brutality, we might say).
Section 19 PACE Explained: General Power of Seizure and Its Legal Limits
Section 19 PACE provides as follows-
19 General power of seizure
(1)The powers conferred by subsections (2), (3) and (4) below are exercisable by a constable who is lawfully on any premises.
(2)The constable may seize anything which is on the premises if he has reasonable grounds for believing—
(a)that it has been obtained in consequence of the commission of an offence; and
(b)that it is necessary to seize it in order to prevent it being concealed, lost, damaged, altered or destroyed.
(3)The constable may seize anything which is on the premises if he has reasonable grounds for believing—
(a)that it is evidence in relation to an offence which he is investigating or any other offence; and
(b)that it is necessary to seize it in order to prevent the evidence being concealed, lost, altered or destroyed.
(4)The constable may require any information which is [stored in any electronic form] and is accessible from the premises to be produced in a form in which it can be taken away and in which it is visible and legible [or from which it can readily be produced in a visible and legible form] if he has reasonable grounds for believing—
(a)that—
(i)it is evidence in relation to an offence which he is investigating or any other offence; or
(ii)it has been obtained in consequence of the commission of an offence; and
(b)that it is necessary to do so in order to prevent it being concealed, lost, tampered with or destroyed.
Why Section 19 PACE Does Not Apply to Filming Police in the Street
Section 19 is in a part of PACE which is specifically designated “Powers of Entry, Search & Seizure” and the proceeding sections are all about Police powers of entry into premises either with or without search warrants, in certain defined circumstances. It is a piece of legislation (first drafted 40 years ago) which is designed to allow Officers investigating a crime to gather evidence of the crime, or the presumed proceeds of crime (such as stolen goods) whilst they are searching premises.
“Section 19” therefore does not give Police Officers the power to confiscate mobile phones in order to prevent filming. It was never intended to be used in this way, and Officers purporting to use it in this manner are doing so illegally. This becomes even clearer when the specific wording of the legislation is analysed-
- “Exercisable by a Constable who is lawfully on any premises” – Although ‘premises’ is a word which is not necessarily confined in its meaning to ‘indoors’- it can include a place in the open air – that place must be a distinct piece of land in single occupation/ ownership. The middle of the street (where Natalie’s encounter with the Police took place) can clearly not be defined as “premises.” If you are on a public highway, you are not “on premises” and thus Section 19 is irrelevant and inapplicable.
- Even if the encounter took place “on premises”, the Constable can still only seize “evidence in relation to an offence.” Filming in public is not itself an offence. Filming an officer talking to you is not an offence. Filming an officer searching or arresting somebody else is also not an offence (and would not constitute evidence of whatever offence the arrestee is being accused of, that naturally having already occurred).
- Even if a Constable can clear the above statutory hurdles, and does have legitimate grounds for believing that an offence has been ‘captured’ on your mobile phone, and you and he are currently “on premises” where Section 19 is exercisable, note the crucial caveat – “that it is necessary to seize it in order to prevent the evidence being concealed, lost, altered or destroyed.” In encounters of this nature, the person recording the Police is doing so precisely in order to preserve a record of what is happening, and it is nonsense to assert that there is an imminent danger of that evidence being destroyed.
Indeed, what the Police really want to do through their intervention in this manner is not to preserve existing evidence, but to prevent the accumulation of further evidence – for the first thing they will do is to switch off/ put down the phone. They know this, and so do we, and it is a travesty of the law for them to pretend otherwise. Even if the Officer genuinely wanted to see, rather than stop, the recording – then the correct and lawful first port of call is simply to ask the person filming to send the officer a copy of the recording, as indeed my client pointed out to the Police in the incident described above: “All you had to do was ask…”
So, on multiple grounds, my analysis of the law showed that everything the Police did to Natalie on this occasion was wrong – they had no power to stop her filming; to take her phone; to brutalise, humiliate, handcuff and imprison her at the roadside.
Claiming Compensation for Unlawful Arrest, False Imprisonment and Assault by Police – How I Helped Natalie Turn 47 minutes of Detention into £25,000 Damages
By writing a detailed and effective letter of claim on behalf of Natalie, I swiftly obtained from Merseyside Police an admission of liability and I was able to bring them to the negotiating table without the need for Court proceedings.
Although Natalie’s unlawful arrest thankfully lasted less than an hour, there were much more long- lasted consequences from the Police brutality she had experienced, and I helped her to evidence and quantify them as follows –
- Obtaining a report from an orthopaedic expert in relation to her left wrist injury (which proved to be a tendon inflammation).
- Obtaining a report from a psychiatric expert in relation to the shock/ psychological impact of these distressing events, including anxiety and sleep disruption.
- As well as her injuries, the trespass to goods she had suffered as a result of the Police illegally holding her phone for over 2 weeks.
- The aggravating features of the case – entitling her to more than just basic compensation. In Natalie’s case, these included the high-handed, intimidating, oppressive and very public nature of the first Officer’s treatment of her – a gross and totally unnecessary affront to her personal dignity and integrity.
I am pleased to confirm that on the basis of this evidence, I was able to get Merseyside Police to increase from their original offer, which was only £3,000, and agree to pay £25,000 damages for Natalie, plus her legal costs. It was no less than she deserved.
5-Star Client Review: Unlawful Arrest and Police Misconduct Claim Success
Natalie wrote the following 5 star review of my handling of her case, here on Trustpilot –
Natalie Mclachlan gave iaingould.co.uk 5 stars. Check out the full review…
“I done my research before choosing Iain to reach out too about my case and I was not disappointed! From my very first conversation with Iain I knew I had made the right choice. In a nutshell I was unlawfully arrested and detained with my phone unlawfully taken from me, during this I suffered a serious injury. Iain has been honest, consistent and supportive throughout my dealings with him. If you need someone who is as passionate and honest as they claim when it comes to justice involving police, then he is 100% your guy! Everyone claims to have your best interest at heart and he truly does. We have just settled after a bit of back and forth and I am satisfied with the outcome of the case and completely satisfied with the service provided by Iain and his team.”
How I Can Help You
No matter how much they might not wish it to be the case, when it comes to filming in the street police officers have no special power to prevent you filming them, or to confiscate phones from the public. If the Police try to bully or blag you into believing the opposite, contact me to seek expert advice and representation on a no win, no fee basis. If they use “might” to overwhelm you, let’s show them that it doesn’t make “right” – just pick up the phone.
How you can help
I publish these articles every Monday morning to demystify police powers and to help people understand when those powers have been misused. If this post has clarified your rights or reinforced the importance of police accountability, please consider leaving a 5, yes 5 star review. Your review helps point others towards experienced representation at a time when clear guidance really matters. Thank you.
Contact the Expert Police Misconduct Solicitor
Iain Gould is a solicitor specialising in complaints, claims and civil actions against the Police. With over 30 years of experience and a national reputation, he has successfully sued all 43 police forces in England and Wales challenging abuse of power and securing rightful compensation.
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