Mirren Gidda assisted Christina Juman and Michael Taghipour of Deighton Pierce Glynn solicitors in settling an unlawful arrest claim against the Chief Constable of South Wales Police.

A member of the public had reported being stalked and provided police with an image of the suspect, which an officer ran through the force’s facial recognition technology. Despite the software placing the Claimant, a Black man, as 32nd in a list of suggested matches and giving him a probability score of 37.3% (well below the reasonable score level of 70%), the facial recognition operator identified the Claimant as a possible match with the suspect.

Police officers then went to the Claimant’s address, arrested him, handcuffed him, searched his property and his car and downloaded data from his electronic devices. Police also contacted the Immigration Command and Control Centre and ran checks of the Claimant, despite him being a British national.

After around 13 hours in detention, the Claimant had an interview with his criminal law solicitor. She asked to see the image of the suspect and instantly identified it was not the Claimant. The police then confirmed the same.

Mirren and the Claimant’s solicitors made an offer to the Defendant to settle the claim, which included seeking damages for false imprisonment, assault/battery and the searches. The offer also sought aggravated damages to include the racially aggravated elements of the Claimant’s arrest and breach of the police’s own policies around facial recognition. This offer was accepted by the police in late November 2025.