Silence is not Obstruction

Today’s blog post addresses following the question: can you be arrested for Obstruction of a Police Officer, simply for failing to answer their questions? Or perhaps I should say – can you be lawfully arrested for this?

My client, Anthony Rippingale, is the 72-year-old proprietor of a vehicle repair garage and MOT centre in Cambridgeshire and lives on the same premises as the garage.

As at January 2023, he was the registered keeper of a BMW motor car, one of approximately ten vehicles he owned for his business.

One Monday morning, Anthony received a visit at his premises from two Cambridgeshire Police Officers who wanted to know who had been driving the BMW two days previously.

Anthony answered truthfully that he did not know who had been driving that particular car, as he had been away from home over the weekend and it was one of several “garage” cars, which might be used by a lot of different people, including his customers.  All Anthony knew for certain at that time was that he himself had not been driving the BMW on the evening in question.

Anthony questioned the Officers as to whether the vehicle had been reported as involved in an accident or a crime; in response they confirmed it had not, but that there had simply been a report of an unknown man and woman in the car “having an argument.” At this point Anthony legitimately questioned whether the Officers had nothing better to do with their time, as he wasn’t going to waste his own looking into the answer to a question which he felt the Police had no right to be asking, in the absence of an accident or allegation of crime.

The Officers persisted in demanding that Anthony find out who was driving the car over the weekend and then, when he failed to immediately agree to do so one of the pair threatened Anthony as follows: “I’ll arrest [you] under Obstruct Police until you tell me.”

Not willing to submit to such crass bullying, Anthony replied “You do that then”, whereupon the Officer announced: “Ok, you’re under arrest on suspicion of obstructing Police, let’s go”.

The Officer now stepped into the porch of Anthony’s house, seized hold of his right arm and handcuffed him whilst the second Officer also stepped into the porch and took hold of Anthony’s left wrist.

Anthony was then led outside whilst his wife and son remonstrated about the Officers’ actions.

Anthony was taken to the Officers’ car, searched and placed into the back seat.

Anthony couldn’t quite believe what was happening to him but remained stoical in the face of the Officers’ intimidation.  Do we live in a country in which ordinary citizens can be taken from their homes by force for failing to answer a Police Officer’s question, absent any evidence that they have committed a criminal offence?

The answer of course, is that we do not, and the Police Officers who had abducted Anthony from his house should have known this as well, but they nevertheless undertook a strange charade in an apparent attempt to ‘crack’ Anthony’s perceived uncooperativeness. 

Shortly after Anthony had been placed in the Police car the arresting Officer approached him and stated as follows –

“So, you are under arrest.  You don’t have to talk to me, I explained that in the caution, and anything you do say I can use against you in Court.  But the option is, the van is still not here.  You tell us who was using the vehicle over the weekend, and we check on the female, then it’s all hunky dory.  Potentially.  That is another option.  If that option works and checks out, I will take the cuffs off, de-arrest you and get back to work for the rest of day.  How does that sound?”

It sounded to Anthony like a threat from an Officer who was breaking the law and he quite rightly replied only with his silence.

Anthony was held prisoner in the car for about 20 minutes, until a Police van arrived and he was transferred, still in handcuffs, into the caged section at the rear of the van – the ‘loading up’ manoeuvre performed before an arrested person is driven off to Custody.  Anthony has arthritis in his knees, and struggled to climb up into the van, experiencing discomfort as he did so. Furthermore, it being January, the cage section of the van was, in colloquial terms, “freezing cold”.

Anthony was then detained for a further period of approximately 50 minutes during which time the Police Officers searched his home and garage premises, claiming the right to do so under Section 17 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE).

They did not in fact have any such right in the circumstances. Section 17 gives Officers the right to enter and search premises for the purposes of finding a person who they want to arrest for an indictable offence i.e an offence sufficiently serious to be tried in the Crown Court (Obstruction is in fact a summary only offence – triable only in the Magistrates Court – and, of course, Anthony was already under arrest) OR for the purposes of ‘saving life or limb or preventing serious damage to property.’

It is one of the most commonly abused powers in PACE, misused by Officers who either don’t know or don’t care where the limit of their authority lies.

Whilst on the premises, the Officers encountered Antony’s wife, his two adult sons and young granddaughter. The Officers questioned the family as to the whether they knew anything about the whereabouts of the woman who had been seen ‘having an argument’ two nights previously, in alleged connection with the BMW. When these enquiries also drew blanks, the following immortal words were captured on the Officers’ Body Worn Video recorders  –

Officer 1: “He [Anthony] could tell us who was driving it, but won’t.”

Officer 2: “Yeah, but I also think they [the rest of the Rippingale family] could tell us as well.”

Officer 1: “But they’re not. So why aren’t we arresting everybody then?”

This exchange was rounded off by the first Officer coming to the regretful conclusion that: “We can’t nick them all, because of the 2 year old, someone has to look after her...”

It was already a farcical situation, but frankly could have escalated to utterly ridiculous levels had the Officers not, barely, been able to restrain their impulse to arrest the entire family.

All of this was unbeknownst to Anthony in his captivity in the Police van. Eventually, Anthony heard the engine of the vehicle starting up and he was driven away – but after travelling for approximately 2 miles, the van turned around and returned to Anthony’s house where he was allowed to exit the van and was de-arrested, the Officers telling him that they had had a “change of heart.”

That was all very well; but Policing is something that always needs to be done with the head, not the heart. No competent Officer could have thought that Anthony was committing a criminal offence – so either the Officers concerned need to go back to training school, or they were acting out a deliberate charade – a bluff which they then escalated by ‘pretending’ to be driving Anthony into Custody before turning around.

Anthony showed great determination in stoically standing his ground, in such trying circumstances, and calling their bluff.

It subsequently transpired that the reason for the Police interest in the BMW was an incident which had been reported occurring 2 days previously when a member of the public had seen a man and woman arguing and the man then getting into the BMW motor car in an apparently drunken state with the woman not wanting him to drive in that state.  There was no suggestion that the man in question (who was not Anthony) had been involved in any physical altercation with the woman, nor that he had actually driven the car whilst under the influence.

Although it felt like much longer for Anthony, when we obtained the Police records for this incident it was established that his total length of detention was for 1 hour 21 minutes. Thankfully, Anthony did not sustain any long-term psychological impact nor any injury other than transitory discomfort to his knees whilst he was held captive in the van.

Under guidelines laid down in the landmark 1997 Court of Appeal decision Thompson & Hsu v The Commission of Police of the Metropolis, the general range of damages for a wrongful arrest runs (on a reducing scale) from £1,000 for a detention of one hour to £6,000 for a detention of 24 hours (once the figures have been updated for inflation).  However, although Anthony’s detention was for not much more than a single hour, I was successful in recovering no less than £7,000 damages for him, plus his legal costs, which I think is correctly reflective of the aggravating circumstances of this incident and the seriousness of the Police abuse of power.

Silence is not Obstruction

The Cambridgeshire Police log in regard to Anthony’s arrest attempts to justify it as follows: “The male was purposely obstructive to Officers by not supplying the information”.

Silence is not obstruction, nor is refusal to supply information.

The offence of obstructing a Police Officer is defined by Section 89(2) of the Police Act 1996 as wilful obstruction of a Constable in the execution of his duty.  It is a summary only offence (i.e. triable only in the Magistrates Court, not the Crown Court.)  It carries a maximum penalty of 1 month imprisonment or a level 3 fine.

Whilst many examples of this offence involve actual physical obstruction of an Officer there are of course several verbal and non-violent ways in which the offence can potentially be committed – generally circumstances in which a person ‘tips off’ potential offenders that the Police are coming (including giving warning to other motorists of a Police speed ‘trap up’ ahead) and instances in which a person is actively giving misleading information such as a false name or address.

There is no legal duty at common law to provide the Police with information or actively assist them with their enquiries.  This principle – effectively the right to remain silent prior to arrest, as well as after it, was clearly defined by Lord Parker CJ in the 1966 case of Rice v Connelly  –

“The sole question here is whether the Defendant had a lawful excuse for refusing to answer the questions put to him.  In my judgement he had.  It seems to be quite clear that although every citizen has a moral duty, or, if you like, a social duty to assist the Police, there is no legal duty to that effect, and indeed the whole basis of the common law is the right of the individual to refuse to answer questions put to him by persons in authority, and to refuse to accompany those in authority to any particular place; short, of course, of arrest…in my judgement there is all the difference in the world between deliberately telling a false story – something which on no view a citizen has a right to do – and preserving silence, or refusing to answer, something which he has every right to do”.

Such a principle is of course one of the defining hallmarks of a free and democratic state as opposed to an authoritarian Police state. How ludicrous it is for a person to be arrested for failing to answer a question (or even deliberately refusing to answer it) when one of the inalienable rights of an arrested person is the very right to remain silent that the arresting Officer must immediately inform him that he has.

Anthony’s arrest was a sham; a gross abuse of power which on no interpretation of the facts could ever have had a legal basis.  It is shameful that Cambridgeshire Police have failed to take the opportunity to admit this or to offer Anthony an apology.

Perhaps they are maintaining their right to silence; but in this case the damages they have paid speak louder than words.

The actual last word in this blog post, however, I will leave to Anthony, who wrote this very kind review of his case-

Knowing that the actions of the Police that day were unquestionably a breech of their authority I contacted 10 different law firms to air my concerns. Iain Gould was THE ONLY legal representative to get back to me and confirmed what had happened to be outrageous. Mr Gould began work building a case straight away and I’m pleased to report negotiated a very good settlement on my behalf as compensation for what I was subjected to by bully mentality police officers that day.

Iain and his colleagues are a friendly, no nonsense team who get the job done and stand up to the police abusing their powers. I asked Iain Gould to give them a bloody nose which he delivered 100%, if you have a problem with injustice he is your man.