The primary duty of the Police is to keep the peace; but all too often, they break it – and today’s blog post contains a prime example of this and explains how I helped my clients Louise and Colin win compensation when they were unlawfully arrested by Officers of Nottinghamshire Police.
One evening in September 2020, Louise, a nurse, returned home from a long shift in work. Her partner Colin was waiting for her, along with her pet dogs.
Shortly afterwards, Louise and Colin noticed a Police car pull up on the road outside their home – and saw several Police Officers violently apprehending and handcuffing a young woman, whom they recognised as their neighbour. A short while later, they saw their neighbour being released by the Officers.
Louise remembered that she had left her phone charger inside her car and went out to retrieve it. As she opened the front door to leave, her dogs ran outside, and Louise and Colin had to spend a few moments shouting for the dogs to come back and ushering them back into the flat.
Once the dogs were safely back inside the flat, Louise turned and took several steps along the garden path. At this point, she saw three of the Police Officers who had been involved in the altercation with her neighbour, rapidly approaching.
Louise was apprehensive about the Officers – given how she had seen them conduct themselves with her neighbour – and she therefore decided to go back inside her flat; however as she attempted to lock her front door she was prevented from doing so by the Officers, who forced their way in shouting that they needed to enter her flat because of a “domestic incident”.
Both Louise and Colin truthfully denied that any ‘domestic’ had taken place between them, but nevertheless the Officers forced their way into the flat – barging past Louise and knocking her into the wall in the process.
The Officers then ‘swarmed’ Colin, twisting his arms behind his back painfully and announcing that he was under arrest.
The only explanation which the Officers were prepared to offer to either of my shocked clients at this point was the claim that there had been a “Domestic”.
Colin was then marched from the flat.
Louise remonstrated with the Officers about their treatment of her partner, and reiterated that no fight or argument had taken place between them, if that was what was being alleged. Unfortunately, two of the Officers – Special Constable Hotham and Special Sergeant Wagstaff then took hold of Louise, forcing her arms behind her back and announcing that she was now also under arrest for being “Drunk and disorderly”.
Louise immediately challenged the Officers, asserting that she had just returned home from work – pointing out that she was still wearing her nursing uniform – and that she was stone cold sober. To reinforce this, she offered to undergo a breathalyser test.
Apparently still wanting to arrest our client – but recalibrating his excuse for doing so – Special Constable Hotham then announced that Louise was being detained for a “Breach of the peace”.
As this incident was ongoing, Louise wisely and repeatedly asked for the Officers to activate their body worn cameras; however, they wilfully refused to do so.
I have written before about how strongly I feel that there should be no discretion for Officers who are equipped with body worn video cameras to not record any conflict situations with members of the public; it is in everyone’s interest, and indeed the overarching interests of justice, that such cameras be activated to properly evidence what is going on and to act as truly impartial witnesses to the events. Or, in other words – no ‘off button’ for Officers!
Outside the flat, Officers asked Colin for his personal details, but he refused to provide them because he was incensed by their conduct and knew that he had done nothing wrong.
Shortly afterwards, Louise was also led out of the flat in handcuffs and bundled roughly into a waiting Police car – during which process, SC Hotham tried to slam the car door shut and caught Louise’s foot, injuring her.
As Colin maintained his refusal to provide his details, he was jostled by the Officers. He felt one of them grabbing and tightening his handcuffs and another one grabbing his underpants and pulling them with such force that they ripped.
Meanwhile, Louise was told by one of the Officers that if Colin agreed to return to his own home address, and she returned inside the flat then they would both be de-arrested. Although my client was outraged by the purported reason for her arrest, she agreed to this proposal as she was desperate for them both to simply be released.
Louise’s handcuffs were duly removed, and she was allowed to return into her home. Colin, however, was not released; he was told he was under arrest for breach of the peace and for being drunk and disorderly, placed into a Police car, and driven to the Bridewell Police Station in Nottingham.
The custody record stated that Colin was arrested at 23.00hrs by Special Constable Hotham and the circumstances of arrest were described as follows –
“Officers whilst dealing with a non related matter had been approached by the DP [detained person] who is drunk shouting and swearing – DP has moved away however has repeatedly come back out of his house onto front garden shouting abuse – arrested BOP [breach of peace]”.
Colin denied this – the only shouting that had come from himself or Louise was when they were calling to get the dogs back into the flat. It was also noted in the custody record that Colin had red marks on his wrists from the handcuffs – consistent with his allegations that these had been tightened/twisted to cause him pain.
A short while later, Louise arrived at the Police Station – having driven there herself – in order to establish why Colin had been arrested and to submit a complaint about the treatment that both of the couple had suffered. She subsequently received a telephone call regarding her complaint from SS Wagstaff, who did not advise her at the time that he had been one of the arresting Officers.
After spending a miserable night in the cells, Colin was released from custody without charge at 8.50am the following morning with the custody record noting that there was “insufficient evidence” to proceed against him.
A Breach of the Peace – or A Breach by the Police?
What is a ‘Breach of the Peace’?
Breach of the Peace is a famous, although also somewhat vague- sounding phrase of the English common law. A literal reading of the phrase might suggest that it could be committed by merely noisy, offensive or anti-social behaviour – but it is much more limited in scope than that. The essence of the offence is the commission of personal violence or imminently threatened violence (which can include violence to property, if done or threatened in the presence of its owner). In modern law, the key definition was provided by the Court of Appeal in R V Howell [1982] QB 416, as quoted with approval by the House of Lords in R. (Laporte) v Chief Constable of Gloucestershire Constabulary[2006] UKHL 55 –
“We are emboldened to say that there is a breach of the peace whenever harm is actually done or is likely to be done to a person or in his presence to his property or a person is in fear of being so harmed through an assault, an affray, a riot, unlawful assembly or other disturbance. It is for this breach of the peace when done in his presence or the reasonable apprehension of it taking place that a constable, or anyone else, may arrest an offender without warrant.”
Another important qualification for this arrest, is the need for the arrestee to be released as soon as the danger of any continued breach of the peace has passed – it is not an offence for which one can be detained whilst investigation/ evidence gathering is going on, because it is not an offence for which one can face subsequent prosecution and conviction. This was neatly summed up by the judgment in Chief Constable of Cleveland Police v McGrogan[2002] EWCA Civ 86:
“where a person has been arrested for breach of the peace, the power to detain to prevent a further breach of the peace is limited to circumstances where there is a real (rather than fanciful) apprehension based on all the circumstances that if released the arrestee will renew his breach of the peace within a short time; the officer making the decision for continued detention must have an honest belief that further detention is necessary to prevent a breach of the peace, and there must be reasonable grounds for such belief; continued detention cannot be justified on the ground that sooner or later the arrestee, if released, is likely to breach the peace.”
In my experience, Police officers routinely misuse or abuse the concept of breach of the peace – either arresting a person without sufficient grounds or keeping them arrested long after any such grounds are gone.
Winning Damages Against the Police
When I learned what had befallen Louise and Colin, I was happy to accept instructions to act on their behalf and I built a strong claim for compensation for them, the key points of which were as follows –
- Louise had been restrained and detained by the Officers before they had even announced any intention to arrest her and thus, they lacked even purportedly lawful justification for their uses of force upon her.
- There was no reasonable basis to suspect that Louise was intoxicated – her speech was clear and coherent, she was steady on her feet, she was still wearing her nursing uniform – it was in fact transparent that the arresting Officer could not have genuinely believed that Louise was drunk and disorderly, and that instead he was ‘taking the name of that offence in vain’ – as a mere pretext to assert power over her.
- Likewise, there was no reasonable basis to suspect that Louise had committed or would commit any ‘breach of the peace’ – this further offence apparently being dredged up by the Officers as an excuse after the Claimant had correctly called them out on the manifest falsity of the drunk and disorderly arrest.
- Colin’s arrest – a much longer detention – was equally improper. SC Hotham’s initial assertion that Colin had been arrested for “domestics” was wholly inadequate – it failed to describe any actual criminal offence.
- There was no reasonable basis to suspect that Colin had committed any breach of the peace. Insofar as the Officers claimed to have heard Colin shouting shortly prior to their attendance on the premises, this was clearly directed towards Louise’s dogs.
- Yet further, any assertion that the Officers genuinely believed that Colin (who had had 4 cans of beer earlier that night) was ‘drunk and disorderly’ was substantially undermined by the fact that this alleged offence was not recorded in the custody record – strongly suggesting that the arresting Officer and/or the Custody Sergeant did not believe it had been committed.
- Finally, even if the Officers genuinely believed that a ‘domestic’ argument or fight amounting to a breach of the peace had been occurring between my clients, such a belief was far from giving justification for the Officers to assault and arrest my clients immediately upon their entry into the premises. Police Officers are quite correctly under a primary duty to consider and explore reasonable alternatives to violence and arrest to resolve apparent conflicts. The Officers on this occasion could have simply tried speaking to Louise and Colin in a calm manner, and if necessary, inviting them to attend a voluntary interview at the Police Station. Instead, they went charging into Louise’s flat like bulls into a china shop.
I brought claims against Nottinghamshire Police on behalf of Louise and Colin for assault and battery, wrongful arrest and trespass to land. The Police’s initial response was to deny liability – presenting a very different account of what had gone on. Of course, in the absence of any body camera footage (as noted above) this meant that it was my clients’ word against that of the officers – but my long experience of such legal battles gave me the confidence to trust my clients’ account and the knowledge to identify the weaknesses in the Police case. After issuing Court proceedings against the Chief Constable, and notwithstanding the Force filing a detailed defence in which they again robustly disputed liability, I am pleased to confirm that I have recently concluded Louse and Colin’s claims for damages totalling over £28,000 plus legal costs.
The peace that night was being broken by the Officers – not my innocent clients whom they terrorised in their own home and arrested. The Police power of arrest is supposed to be a last resort in the fight against crime – but very often, as was the case here, Officers seem to act with the aggression of an army whose objective is arrest, the biggest bullies in town.
My clients’ names have been changed.
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