STAFF monitoring security cameras are suing police for damages, claiming they were falsely arrested by officers investigating an allegation of erasing video footage.

Five people are suing Northumbria Police for false imprisonment after being arrested in June 1999.

Officers were investigating a complaint that CCTV tape showing a youth interfering with a car had been erased deliberately.

Many of the five, who work in the unit at South Shields Town Hall, claim they were not even on duty when the incident with the youth and the car occurred.

They claim there was no evidence to suggest any of them had done anything wrong and say the police instigated a "blanket arrest".

The group's solicitor, Michael Laffey, of Newcastle law firm Thompsons, said: "This is a remarkable case in which the police arrested my clients without so much as a shred of evidence against any of them.

"The fact that someone works somewhere where an offence may have occurred does not give them the right to make arrests carte blanche."

A Northumbria Police official said the matter was at an early stage and he could not comment further.