Police Law Blog European Decisions Statutory Materials

New Lockdown: No New Rules Yet

No new Regulations have as yet been laid before Parliament setting out the detailed wording of the new lockdown measures. The Government website states:

When you can leave home

You must not leave or be outside of your home except where you have a ‘reasonable excuse’. This will be put in law. The police can take action against you if you leave home without a ‘reasonable excuse’, and issue you with a fine (Fixed Penalty Notice).

The Government have confirmed that the current instructions “will be put in law”. However, the circumstances in which the FPNs will now be triggered are not yet specified. Watch this space.

A higher test of necessity for arrest?

In Rashid v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [2020] EWHC 2522 (QB) the High Court (Lavender J) has allowed an appeal against a Recorder’s decision to dismiss a general practitioner’s claim for wrongful arrest, on the basis that the officers involved lacked reasonable grounds for believing the arrest was necessary. It follows recent cases in articulating a higher bar for the police to show reasonable grounds for necessity to arrest than perhaps had been thought to apply. It also raises interesting arguments about whether any other defences, such as the “Lumba/Parker” issue or ex turpi causa (the defence of illegality) might be available where an arrest has been unlawful.

If an Englishman’s home is his castle, his clothes are his suit of armour

Pile v Chief Constable of Merseyside Police [2020] EWHC 2472 (QB) concerned what many might consider to be the tail end of just another good night out. The claimant got into a taxi on 22 April 2017, in an advanced state of intoxication, and the taxi driver rang 999 to report that she had started abusing him and ‘kicking off’. She vomited all over herself and over the back of the taxi. Officers responding to this unfortunate misunderstanding found her covered in vomit, including in her hair. They arrested her for the offence of being drunk and disorderly. At the police station, Ms Pile was flailing her arms with the intention of striking the officers accompanying her. She later accepted a £60 fixed penalty notice as an alternative to being prosecuted. For many, the story would have ended there…

Minimum requirements under article 3 for rape investigation; €7,000 awarded for breach

In Y v Bulgaria [2020] ECHR 163, the European Court of Human Rights set out the minimum requirements for criminal investigations where a person has been subjected to ill-treatment contrary to Article 3 and held that those principles were properly derived from cases involving breaches of Article 2, despite their different content and rationale. Here, the court found a breach of Article 3 in respect of the authorities’ failure to pursue an obvious line of enquiry in a rape investigation and awarded €7,000. It is an example how an investigation can be satisfactory in several respects but still fail to comply with the minimum requirements of Article 3. It is also worth comparing with the bands of damages that English cases have suggested.

An insight into the relevance of insight in misconduct outcomes

If a police officer facing professional disciplinary proceedings disputes the misconduct allegations and continues to do so even after a finding of gross misconduct, can the misconduct hearing conclude that that the officer lacks insight and remorse – and impose a higher disciplinary sanction? The case of General Medical Council v Awan [2020] EWHC 1553 (Admin) from the medical regulatory tribunals suggest that such a conclusion should not be reached automatically, although a continued denial of the findings may well be a relevant consideration.

Whilst professional disciplinary proceedings brought by the General Medical Council (‘the GMC’) against doctors are based on a different regulatory regime, the general principles underpinning those proceedings are equally applicable to police misconduct hearings.