Today’s blog post explains that a police search warrant for a property does not automatically give officers the right to search people inside it, nor to detain or use force against them without proper justification. It uses a real case involving a couple whose home was searched by Humberside Police under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, where officers unlawfully handcuffed, detained, and strip-searched both occupants despite the warrant not authorising personal searches and without providing a copy of the warrant as required by law. The post highlights that such actions breached the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and established legal safeguards, rendering the search and officers’ conduct unlawful. It concludes that the police abused their powers, and the case ultimately settled with significant damages paid to the claimants for trespass, false imprisonment, and assault, reinforcing the principle that individuals’ rights in their own home must be respected even during lawful police operations.
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Humberside Police Humbled Over Abuse of Search Warrant Powers
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through it. The rain may enter. The storms may enter. But the King of England may not enter. All his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.”
William Pitt the Elder, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1760
Does a Search Warrant for an address, also entitle the Police to search any persons that they find inside that address?
This week’s blog post will address that and other related questions, by reference to a case which my colleague Alexandra Nelmes, expert actions against the Police solicitor, has recently settled against Humberside Police, with the Police ‘caving in’ and agreeing to pay our clients significant damages, just days before the civil trial of the claim was due to begin.
The Background Facts: How A House-Search Became a Strip-Search
Our clients Colin and Claire (names changed) reside at an address in Yorkshire. In March 2021, Humberside Police obtained a Magistrates Court Search Warrant for our clients’ house, under Section 23 (3) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, following false ‘tip-offs’ that drugs were being dealt from the property.
When officers arrived to execute the warrant, Claire was out shopping and Colin was in the back garden of the premises, smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone with his daughter. To Colin’s surprise, Police Officers suddenly swarmed into the garden, and demanded that he confirm his name and address, which he did. Despite Colin’s co-operative and non-threatening stance, he was, nevertheless, immediately handcuffed, with his hands behind his back.
One of the Officers told Colin that the Police had a warrant to search the premises for drugs (although they did not, notably, produce a copy of the warrant for Colin) and continued –
“To save us the time, are we going to find anything in there, and if so, where will we find it?”
Colin honestly admitted that he had a single joint of cannabis upstairs, in a tub in his bedroom drawer. He had no other illicit substances in the house: the cannabis was for his own personal use, and he was not a drug-dealer.
The Police then started searching the house from top to bottom, finding nothing more than the single ‘spliff’ which Colin had told them would be there.
Escalation of Police Powers: Unlawful Detention and Strip Searches
Matters now escalated, however, as Colin was led inside the house by officers. His handcuffs were removed – but only, it transpired, because the officers now wanted him to remove all of his clothes, for the purposes of a “strip search.” Colin was told that if he did not obey their instructions, he would be “taken down.”
Colin, in fear that force would be used if he did not comply, removed his t-shirt, trousers, shoes and socks and boxer shorts, so that he was completely naked. The officers then told Colin to ‘squat’ and inspected the area of his genitals. Nothing being found, he was then allowed to re- dress himself, but felt extremely embarrassed, humiliated and degraded.
Clothes are quicker to put back on than your dignity in a situation like this.
Claire now returned home from her shopping trip, having been alerted by a phone call from her daughter (to whom Colin had been speaking when the ‘raid’ began).
The Police had been at the property for around 10 minutes when Claire arrived. The officers told her about the search warrant – but as with Colin, did not produce or supply her with a copy of it.
A discussion then ensued between the officers, at the conclusion of which it was decided that Claire should be removed from the house “because she [wasn’t] [t]here at the time” of entry. Nevertheless, they didn’t want to let her go completely.
This led to Claire being taken back out of the house and detained in the front garden, under the supervision of one of the Police officers. Colin, meanwhile, had been moved into the living room of the house, where he was also detained under supervision of the Police.
The search of the premises concluded around 10 minutes after Claire’s arrival, but rather than leaving (nothing having been found), the officers then took Claire back inside the house and just as they had done with Colin, subjected her to a strip-search.
To her immense embarrassment, Claire was forced by one of the female officers to remove her clothing stage by stage and subject herself to ‘inspection.’ This included Claire having to bare her breasts, and lift them up, and then to remove her knickers and squat down so that the officer could carry out the same degrading visual examination of her genitals as Colin had been subjected to.
Claire was now allowed to re- dress, and was taken into the living room, where Colin was being held. After discussing some administrative matters with them, the Police Officers finally left – leaving our clients’ property a mess, and both of them with a sense of violation – not only of their home, but of their bodies as well.
Public Disclosure and Further Distress Caused by Police Actions
Sadly, their ordeal was still not completely over, however, as the Officers left only to later return to their road and distribute leaflets to neighbouring houses, announcing that a “Section 23 warrant has been executed under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 [in this road] this morning” – causing our clients further shame and humiliation.
What the notice did not say was that rather than uncovering Walter White’s crystal meth factory, the Police had found only a single cannabis joint, and no arrests had (quite rightly) been made.
Also of significance, was the fact that the Police’s prolific distribution of paperwork that day had not included producing and supplying a copy of the actual Search Warrant to either Claire or Colin.
Were the Police in the Wrong? Key Legal Questions Explained
Understandably, Claire and Colin felt that they had been victims of Police abuse of power, and turned to me as an expert in civil liberties and Police law, for advice and assistance, which I was able to offer to them on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis.
The fact that the Police were operating with a Warrant issued by the Court, gave them a considerable degree of protection from being sued by our clients – but certainly not full immunity. The key questions were these –
- Did the Police have the right to detain our clients during the house search (and use handcuffs upon Colin)?
- Did the Search Warrant, issued under the Misuse of Drugs Act, actually give the officers the right to search people they found in the house, as well as the property itself?
- Was the Police failure to show the Warrant to our clients and supply them with a copy significant?
1. Can Police Detain Occupants During a Search Warrant Execution?
The primary answer to this question is no, if the warrant does not specify persons to be searched (as opposed to just the property itself). Anyone found at the premises at the time of the search is free to leave if they want to.
If occupants remain in the property, it is normal for officers to ‘detain’ them in the sense of stopping them from freely coming and going around the house, as this could reasonably be construed as an obstruction of the search, but such a detention must be as proportionate and for as short a time as possible.
Furthermore, even if the occupants are being restricted to a particular room or area of the house, the use of handcuffs upon them would be unlawful unless there was an extraordinary reason – such as a real threat of violence from that person.
In this case, however, both Colin and Claire were treated by the Police as if their presence on the property made them automatically the ‘captives’ of the officers and fair game for handcuffing and searching, in the same way as if they had been arrested. Indeed, this was notwithstanding the fact that Claire herself wasn’t even at home when the Officers arrived.
In this respect, this was a classic abuse of power: none of the officers involved either fully understanding, or respecting, the limits of their authority.
2. Do Search Warrants Allow Police to Search People? Legal Clarification
The answer to this question is a firm no.
The lead Officer later admitted that she had mistakenly believed she had the power to search the occupants under the Search Warrant, but that was not the case, because the Warrant did not specify that persons as well as the property were to be searched.
Code A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (setting out the legal rules governing Police searches) explicitly provides as follows (at paragraph 2.27.b) –
2.27 The following powers to search premises also authorise the search of a person, not under arrest, who is found on the premises during the course of the search: … (b) under a warrant issued under Section 23(3) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to search premises for drugs or documents but only if the warrant specifically authorises the search of persons found on the premises;
This warrant did not, and therefore the searches of both Colin and Claire were unlawful, being carried out by officers who misunderstood the extent of their powers under the warrant – an elementary mistake, with severe consequences for our clients.
It is also worth noting that, even had the warrant authorised the search of persons found in the property, or the Police had had a suspicion independent of the Warrant so as to allow them to exercise their ‘free-standing’ stop and search powers pursuant to Section 23 (2) of the Misuse of Drugs Act, that does not mean that they had the power to conduct a strip- search.
When Are Strip Searches Lawful? Police Powers and Limits
The draconian power of strip- searching someone is closely regulated, and paragraph 3.7 of Code A warns Officers to limit such searches, as follows –
3.7 Searches involving exposure of intimate parts of the body must not be conducted as a routine extension of a less thorough search, simply because nothing is found in the course of the initial search.
3. What Happens If Police Fail to Provide a copy of the Search Warrant?
If the Police fail to produce a copy of the warrant, and do not provide it to the occupants as soon as is practicable, their occupation of the premises and actions thereon are unlawful; effectively, the warrant is invalidated, and this is only right and proper given the need for transparency and accountability if the State is seeking to (temporarily) abrogate the right of privacy to which every Englishman (and woman) is entitled in the ‘castle’ of their home.
Section 16 (5) of PACE provides as follows –
(5) Where the occupier of premises which are to be entered and searched is present at the time when a constable seeks to execute a warrant to enter and search them, the constable—
(a) shall identify himself to the occupier and, if not in uniform, shall produce to him documentary evidence that he is a constable;
(b ) shall produce the warrant to him; and
(c) shall supply him with a copy of it.
The mandatory language employed in this section of the statute is such that a failure to comply with it, absent an objectively good excuse, renders the execution of the warrant invalid and hence all of the actions of the Police upon the premises (or upon persons detained or searched therein) as acts of trespass, liable to be compensated in damages.
Legal Outcome: Compensation for Unlawful Police Conduct
Notwithstanding the multiple Police abuses of the law which I have identified above, Humberside Police denied liability in response to our clients’ claims, and even when they did start to make offers of settlement these were no more than a derisory £500 each, on the grounds of, what the Police argued, were no more than ‘technical’ breaches of the law.
We knew this not to be the case, and we knew the true value of these claims. We stayed the course, guiding Claire and Colin through the Court process until the Chief Constable finally ‘chucked in the towel’ just days before trial.
My colleague Alexandra Nelmes was able to secure total damages of over £12,000 for our clients, plus their legal costs, for trespass to land, false imprisonment and assault and battery.
Further Reading on Police Powers and Civil Liberties
The constitutional importance of the principle of “An Englishman’s home is his Castle”
How to win a claim even when an apparently valid Search Warrant has been lawfully executed.
How you can help
I publish these articles regularly 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-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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