01/12/2010
The Court of Appeal recently held that a police officer who was exercising his power of arrest and reasonably believed it to be necessary, was not required to go through any further mental process before detaining an appellant (Shields (by his litigation friend, Rebecca Shields) v Chief Constable of Merseyside Police [2010] EWCA Civ 1281). Mark George QC of GCN was interviewed about the issues raised by the case for LexisNexis Current Awareness (published 1.12.10)
Extracts from the article as follows:
[Mark George QC] explains: “The appellant and his father had in fact been acquitted of charges of assaulting the police in the execution of their duty, possibly because the magistrates’ court had doubts as to whether the officer was in fact in the execution of his duty.”
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He says the case “makes it clear that provided a police officer believes an offence has been committed (eg that the person arrested has assaulted a fellow officer), it is not necessary that the officer knows whether the appropriate offence that the person is to be arrested for is assault in the execution of the officer’s duty as opposed to for common assault; and provided the person arrested knows the substance of the reason for his arrest, ie assaulting a police officer, it is not necessary for the arresting officer to inform him as to whether he is arrested for assaulting the officer in the execution of his duty or for common assault.”