I read a related article (same story)... it said —
“We don’t know what’s on these hard drives, but it is highly likely they contain indecent material going back to the 1990s. They were found with over 2,500 hard copies of child abuse images and they must have come from somewhere.
“Common sense dictates to me that we shouldn’t be returning indecent images to anyone — yet I am prevented from even examining the material.”
Now this sounds mighty weird to me... he’s saying he doesn’t know what is on the hard drives because they’ve been prevented from examining them — but — they shouldn’t return the hard drives, because they’re sure it had this illegal material.
Now, that just doesn’t make any sense at all...
I’m pretty sure they’ve examined them but can’t say so publicly.
So burn a copy of them which would NOT be looked at until they dot all the “i’s” and cross all the “t’s” with the proper warrant. Then they have what was on his drives when they were returned. They can say they kept an archival copy to be sure everything he had on them was in good order. But if they examine the stuff without a proper warrant, they SHOULD go to jail.
Definitely more behind this story than is reported here.
Return them and then arrest him when he takes possession.