Leo Wallace-Barr, 65, watched through his Ring doorbell in horror as cops approached his property and ripped off the front door – while he was miles away at work

An innocent 65-year-old man caught police smashing through his front door and raiding his home while he was almost 100 miles away at work.

Leo Wallace-Barr, 65, received a notification from his Ring doorbell app while he was on a job in Ambleside, Cumbria. Leo, who runs his own knife-sharpening business, had left the property in Speke, Liverpool, early that morning before setting up his tools in the Lake District just before 9am, when his phone "suddenly started going berserk".

Speaking about the ordeal, Leo told the Liverpool Echo: "I usually ignore it when I'm at work. It's generally just people delivering flyers or something. But 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."

Leo then went to check his home's internal camera and saw "a mob of ant-like people swarming around inside." But on closer inspection, he realised they weren't typical home intruders, but were police officers in uniform.

At first, Leo says, he assumed he had been the victim of a robbery, and that police arrived to assist him. He said: "When I saw it, I thought – innocently enough – maybe some dangerous armed robber had broken in and they'd seen it and chased him away."

In Ambleside, Leo packed up his tools and rushed home to see what was happening. But when he arrived, everything was quiet and his front doors had been smashed in and boarded up. Having checked the inside, Leo had found that police searched the entire property, including the attic space, and claims they "went through his clothes".

In footage captured from the doorbell, a group of police officers were seen approaching Leo's front door, while one used power tools to rip the entire front door away. Leo said: "It was just horrible. I felt like I'd been assaulted. It was a massive violation."

Leo says he was particularly upset about the effect the incident had on his cat. He said: "My poor cat was hiding for three days afterwards. She didn't eat properly for a week. I was really angry about it."

After making a 101 call to find out what sparked the raid, he was told by an officer that a warrant had been issued by a court, and that police had entered the property under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

Leo was baffled. He 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."

He claims police said their suspicions had been raised by the air conditioning units he had installed at the property, coupled with the frosted windows in place downstairs. The implication being – according to Leo – that he was operating a cannabis farm in his house.

Concerned about security, Leo spoke to police and set about replacing his front doors. He found a door fitter who got the job done at a cost of £1,800.

He then went to speak to his neighbours. 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. I could see on the Ring Doorbell app that everyone was walking by and gawking, rubber-necking. God knows what they thought."

Leo is now going through the process of claiming compensation for the cost of repairing his doors, but says the mounds of paperwork, time and effort involved has left him feeling frustrated. 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 told the ECHO: "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."