Dannika Stewart’s ordeal began after lodging a complaint against the Greater Manchester Police’s handling of an investigation into an alleged sex crime against a young person she’d reported to the force (Picture: Sky News)
A woman has claimed police forced her to strip naked in a cell while trying to threaten her into dropping complaints against them.
Dannika Stewart’s case now forms part of an inquiry by Dame Vera Baird – triggered by a Sky News investigation last year into the treatment of women in custody, in particular the use of strip-searches.
Baird will release her report in the coming weeks, with her findings expected to be critical of police conduct.
Ms Stewart’s story began in March 2022, when she reported an alleged sex crime committed against a young person to Greater Manchester Police (GMP).
Three months after lodging her complaint, Ms Stewart claims she was arrested on suspicion of blackmail and forced to strip down in a police cell (Picture: Sky News)
Unhappy with the way she felt the investigation was being handled, she lodged a complaint with the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which included an alleged recording of an officer admitting failings in their inquiries.
Not long after, she was asked to come into Pendleton police station in Greater Manchester, where she was promptly arrested – apparently on suspicion of attempting to blackmail the alleged perpetrator of the sex crime.
Once inside the cell, Ms Stewart claims she was forced to strip naked. She believes this was in an attempt to retrieve the recording from her phone, though she had already removed the SIM prior to her arrest.
She said: ‘I took my tracksuit bottoms off, which I knew they were going to take away from me anyway. I took my legging off and then took my knickers off and I’m just sat there naked.
‘It’s all about power. Because when I left the police station that day the sergeant on the desk said, “you need to drop all your complaints against the police.”’
She added: ‘They needed to show me who was boss. They needed to control what I was doing.’
Ms Stewart went on to file a second complaint, about the strip search, in October 2022. This was in turn passed on to an internal investigations team within the GMP.
The GMP’s subsequent report on the incident reportedly stated that a strip search had not been conducted or requested, before refusing to provide CCTV footage she claimed disproved the force’s version of events.
After escalating her complaint to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, she was told the footage had been ‘corrupted.’
Throughout the ordeal, she remained on bail over the claims of blackmail made against her by the alleged perpetrator of the sex crime she had initially reported, though the charges have since been dropped.
Metro has contacted GMP for comment on Ms Stewart’s allegations.