Report says degrading police strip searches must stop
“Degrading” strip searches carried out by police officers must come to a stop, according to a damning report published today.
Dame Vera Baird KC, the former victims’ commissioner, carried out the review ordered by Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham following complaints from three women of unjustified use of strip searching.
She interviewed more than 15 people who had been arrested and detained by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) in incidents going back to 2021, including the three women who originally featured in a Sky News investigation.
Custody records, detention logs, crime reports, witness statements and CCTV footage were among documents and data that were trawled through.
“The inquiry’s conclusion is that many of these arrests were unnecessary or unlawful,” the report says.
After hearing of the harrowing experiences described by both men and women, Dame Vera recommended that strip searching by police should be severely limited, properly regulated and fully recorded.
“GMP, the NPCC (National Police Chief’s Council) and the Home Office should, forthwith, investigate the potential for use of equipment such as airport screening devices to eradicate degrading strip searching from police practice as much as possible. GMP could lead this endeavour,” she said.
The 210-report includes detailed accounts of what happened to vulnerable people at the hands of GMP officers, many of whom were women who had been victims of rape and domestic abuse.
‘Treated like a piece of meat’
In May 2023, Maria had been due to stay in a hotel in Manchester with her husband but had fled because he throttled her until she was unconscious.
Her screams were heard and her husband was arrested and taken into custody but, despite the fact that she was the victim of a domestic abuse incident and alone in a strange city, no help was offered to Maria.
Over the next five and a half hours, she made fourteen calls from the street asking police for help, including getting money from her husband’s property so that she could go home without success.
Maria was also anxious because she herself was on bail for an unrelated offence in another force area.
Finally, when she called police and told the call handler, while “sobbing and angry”, that she would drown herself, officers arrived and took her into the station.
The two officers, named in the report only as PC X and PC XI, initially said they would take her home but after checking her record on the Police National Computer (PNC), PC XI decided to arrest her for malicious communications, claiming her phone calls to 101 asking for help were “abusive”.
According to the reports, the PNC must have also shown PC XI that Maria was the victim of “hundreds” of sexual offences but this was “deliberately” missed out of their statement.
While Maria was trying to leave the police station via a gate, body-worn footage shows PC XI marching straight at her, wrenching her bag off her and bellowing across the yard: “I’ve just been told that you’re a problem drinker”
Maria was then strip-searched because officers claimed she appeared to have dropped an item, which turned out to be a vape, while being arrested.
“Maria describes being told to take all her clothes off and, when completely naked, to open the lips of her vagina so the police could see inside and to bend over and open her anal area similarly. She felt humiliated and demeaned,” Dame Vera wrote.
She was later released from custody, once again on her own without any means to get herself home from a strange city.
“This is not impressive – so much for police duty of care to a vulnerable female victim of domestic abuse,” Dame Vera wrote.
Maria’s arrest was “pointless”, fellow GMP officers told Dame Vera, and the author expressed fears that PC XI may have simply taken a disliking to her.
Maria told Dame Vera she has no doubt as to why the arrest happened.
“The only reason they did what they did was to degrade me … If I was a
man, I don’t think they would’ve done it. I was treated like a piece of meat”.
GMP has previously denied any wrongdoing by its staff.
Dame Vera, who makes recommendations for consideration both within the force and nationally, said: “I hope that my inquiry and this report will drive change where it is – sometimes urgently – required in GMP.
“My aim is strongly to promote a way of working in the police that will justifiably engender trust across the population and particularly among women.”
Former GMP detective Maggie Oliver described the inquiry as “another damning indictment of one of the country’s largest police forces”.
She said: “Dame Vera Baird’s explosive report reveals a shocking disregard for rights of those coming into contact with the criminal justice system.
Ms Oliver, who has since founded The Maggie Oliver Foundation – a charity supporting adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, said: “Many of those arrested were vulnerable women and we say that this constitutes a very serious abuse of power.”
Dame Vera has set out recommendations on domestic abuse, better custody provision especially for women, improved risk assessment and more humane and dignified treatment of all detainees, a lay presence in police custody and also on arrests.
GMP should refresh officer training for cases where voluntary attendance could have been available.
On arrests, Dame Vera notes: “It is of concern that in a number of cases in this inquiry where there is a continuing dispute, the police appear to have supported one side and taken criminal justice action – in particular, arrest – against the other party.”
A scrutiny panel could perhaps help if there is “evidence of a wider pattern and, if so, to probe the causes and, if necessary, prescribe solutions”, she added.
GMP should participate in this work and pilot the model proposed in this report to move this “urgent agenda forward”, Dame Vera suggests.
She adds: “From now on in GMP, if any strip search is contemplated, the detainee must be asked whether they have something with them they know they would not be allowed to keep, to give the detainee the option of offering items up.
“From now on in GMP, the reasons why any strip search is required must be explained to the detainee by the custody sergeant to the detainee in plain language, relating (a) facts and circumstances justifying it, and (b) why there is no alternative.”
Breaches of the Victims’ Code Rights, which obliges the force to give support to victims of sexual and domestic abuse, were found in the cases of Maria and Dannika, according to Dame Vera.
She said: “Maria was very badly treated by GMP”, and as a domestic abuse victim she should have had a link to the officer in her case and to a local domestic abuse charity via the 24-hour national helpline so that her support needs could have been met without six hours of telephoning the police to get help.
The victims of the predator reported by Dannika were not referred for tailored victim support, they were not given a crime reference and an officer number, and were not updated on progress with the case.
Dame Vera describes the police responses in Maria’s case as being “on a continuum between bureaucratic and unhelpful, and none of them acknowledges the police obligation to victims” plus the strip search custody record note does not refer to the power under which it was carried out.
GMP has been contacted for a response.
