Hertfordshire Police has agreed to pay £34,000 in compensation to an IT director who spent a night in custody after a blog post he had written saw police raid his home.
Samuel Smith brought legal action against the force in the High Court after twelve officers descended on his property, conducted a search and held him in detention.
A court order has now confirmed the force admits to arresting and detaining Mr Smith unlawfully, acknowledging he committed no criminal offence, and accepting officers trespassed on his property.
His arrest record will be removed from the Police National Computer, replaced with a marker indicating he faced false allegations.
The 47-year-old was taken into custody at Hatfield police station, where he remained overnight after the March 2025 incident.
Body camera recordings from the arrest captured Mr Smith opening his front door wearing a dressing gown, visibly trembling as officers informed him of the charges.
Although he was told he faced arrest for false communications – a relatively minor summary offence – the subsequent property search was conducted under powers relating to the more serious charge of malicious communications.
Within six days of the arrest on March 6 last year, investigating officers recorded in police logs the search had not been lawful, and the case was subsequently abandoned.
Twelve officers descended on Samuel Smith's property, conducted a search and held him in detention
|HERTFORDSHIRE POLICE
His electronic devices were also seized during the operation, before the case collapsed.
Mr Smith operates a blog under the pseudonym Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General: a name borrowed from a notorious 17th-century figure who persecuted women on accusations of witchcraft.
The article that prompted his arrest concerned a woman who had been falsely accused of being a paedophile.
In the piece, Mr Smith described two men as an extremist and a drug user, following their publication of false information about the woman in question.
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The two individuals subsequently reported the blog post to police, triggering the chain of events that led to the unlawful arrest.
The force has now settled the matter out of court and issued an apology to Mr Smith, who expressed gratitude to those who supported his case.
This settlement represents the second embarrassing reversal for Hertfordshire Police in recent months.
The settlement represents the second embarrassing reversal for Hertfordshire Police in recent months
| PAThe force previously paid £20,000 to Rosalind Levine and Maxie Allen, a couple who were unlawfully detained after making complaints about their daughter's school via WhatsApp.
In the January 2024 incident, six officers arrived at the couple's home and held them for eleven hours on suspicion of harassment and malicious communications.
Mr Smith's arrest came just weeks after this earlier controversy, raising questions about the force's approach to communications-related offences.
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