The big story: Strip-searching used as a “weapon of control” by GMP custody officers
Top line: A report into how Greater Manchester Police treats women and girls in its custody found that women were unlawfully arrested and unnecessarily strip-searched. Dame Vera Baird, who produced the report, said aspects of GMP’s culture were “clearly problematic”. The force’s chief constable, Stephen Watson, agreed, saying these “aspects” need to be “rooted and booted out.”
Context: Andy Burnham commissioned the report after Sky News spoke to three women who complained about their treatment in GMP custody. One was Zayna Iman, who obtained CCTV footage of her 40-hour detention in which she was strip searched and left face down and topless on a bed. Three hours of the footage was missing, during which time Iman claims she was sexually assaulted.
- Baird spoke with 15 people for the report, but said Iman withdrew her engagement, so her experience is not detailed.
- Iman denies this, arguing she was removed from the review because of complaints she made about the inquiry’s processes.
Quick to criminalise: In one case covered in the report — which Baird recounted to journalists at a press conference last Thursday — a woman (alias Maria) was arrested after reporting her partner for domestic abuse. Her partner was taken to Pendleton police station and detained, but Maria, who is from outside of Manchester, needed to get house keys from him. Unable to access the station, she made multiple calls, became frustrated, and was ultimately arrested for malicious communications. The arrest was declared unlawful in Baird’s report and, she says, is an example of how police “readily criminalise traumatised women.”
Once in custody, she dropped a vape pen into her trousers, but later shook it out of the leg at an officer’s request. Nevertheless she was strip-searched “ostensibly in search of the vape she dropped out of her trousers in the police station yard.” She was made to open the lips of her vagina so police could see inside.
- There were inconsistencies in her custody record, which said there had been an authorisation for a strip search given three hours before it took place.
- In reality, the strip search was carried out as soon as custody was authorised, and the note made two hours later, in retrospect.
Dame Vera Baird speaking to press. Photo: Mayor of Greater Manchester via YouTube.
At Thursday’s press conference, Baird outlined how often strip searches were carried out in the name of “welfare reasons”, i.e. removing someone's clothes and replacing them with “anti-rip” garments that can’t be used for self-harm. But this practice is unnecessary, and open to abuse, Baird said. “We must stop strip searching people for welfare purposes to avoid people getting strip searched for pissing off a custody officer.” “Truly,” she said, “the worst thing you could do to somebody, if they were really suicidal, would be to forcibly take their clothes off.”
“Weapon of control”: Baird said it was hard to see the welfare being provided in the strip-search cases outlined in her report. “There is damage, of an enormous kind, to welfare — let alone to trust — by dealing with strip searching as a weapon of control, which I fear is the conclusion we are driven to.”
- Stephen Watson, chief constable, said the force would accept all of Baird’s recommendations and that the report makes for “appalling reading”, apologising to those affected
- But he also defended the force, saying: “the vast majority of our custody staff are highly professional and committed, despite the pressures of working in such a challenging environment.”
Bottom line: Everyone who Baird spoke to who had experienced strip-searching at GMP said it had been done to humiliate them, to subjugate them, or as Baird said: “to show them who was the boss.” While the report only draws on just over a dozen cases, the behaviour highlighted was evident in every GMP station except in Bolton. However, last week a custody officer at a Bolton station
was arrested on suspicion of sexual touching, misconduct and cyberflashing