Innocent man forced to watch home get ripped apart by police on doorbell camera
An innocent man was horrified as he watched police swarm his home in an attempted drug bust that left his cat ‘hiding for three days’.
Nearly 100 miles away from home on a job in Ambleside, Cumbria, Leo Wallace-Barr wouldn’t usually react when his Ring doorbell goes off.
It could have been the postman, election campaigners, or just someone handing out fliers to his home in Speke, Liverpool.
But June 7 was different. Wallace-Barr, 65, couldn’t ignore it when his Ring app ‘suddenly started going berserk’.
Mr Wallace-Barr, who runs his own knife-sharpening business, said: ‘The notifications just went on and on. So I relented and opened the app.
‘Then I saw all these people outside my house. There was a big commotion going on.’
His inside camera revealed the unexpected visitors to be a horde of police, the Liverpool Echo reported.
Wallace-Barr said: ‘I opened Apple Home and saw a mob of ant-like people swarming around inside.’
He assumed they were there to help him after he had unwittingly fallen victim to a crime.
The 65-year-old said: ‘I thought – innocently enough – maybe some dangerous armed robber had broken in and they’d seen it and chased him away.’
But he was wrong.
The house was quiet when Wallace-Barr arrived home after downing his tools in Ambleside.
His front door had been smashed in and boarded up. Footage showed police using power tools to remove the door and lift it away.
There were signs the police had searched everything, even the attic space and, Wallace-Barr claims, his clothes.
He said: ‘It was just horrible. I felt like I’d been assaulted. It was a massive violation.’
The reason for such an intrusion, Wallace-Barr claims police told him, was to execute a warrant allowing police to enter the property under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
Suspicion had reportedly been raised by air conditioning units installed at the property, and frosted windows on the ground floor.
This indicated to police, Wallace-Barr claimed, that he had a cannabis farm in his house.
Such a claim came as a surprise for Wallace-Barr, who said: ‘I don’t even smoke cigarettes. There aren’t any ashtrays in my house.
‘I’m a man in his sixties. You just assume police are correct about things.’
The police raid has left Wallace-Barr £1,800 out of pocket for the cost of replacing the front doors.
It’s also left him scrambling to repair his reputation in the local community, where people had been ‘walking by and gawking, rubber-necking’ as police searched the home.
‘God knows what they thought’, he said. ‘I went to the neighbours to apologise for what happened. They were very sympathetic. But I felt so ashamed and guilty over it.’
He was particularly upset over the impact on his pet, saying: ‘My poor cat was hiding for three days afterwards. She didn’t eat properly for a week. I was really angry about it.’
Now Wallace-Barr is facing the frustration of the reams of paperwork required to claim compensation from the police, which takes away from time he could be working.
He said: ‘I don’t have time to go to court over this. I stand up for 14 hours a day at work – it’s very physical.’
A spokesperson for Merseyside Police said: ‘We can confirm that a search warrant was carried out at a property in Speke on Friday 7 June.
‘Officers, acting on the basis of intelligence, carried out the warrant and entry was forced to the premises and a search completed, which proved negative.
‘The force carries out rigorous checks when considering the use of warrants and they are only carried out based on sufficient intelligence and when sanctioned by a court.
‘Following the warrant, a complaint was made to Merseyside Police and inquiries were carried out by the force’s Professional Standards Department (PSD).
‘No formal action will be taken and the complainant has been informed.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.