Wrongful Arrest

Hough v Chief Constable of Staffordshire Constabulary (CA LSG 5 April)

The claimant was a passenger in a car stopped by a police patrol car. A routine check on the police computer disclosed an entry warning officers that the occupant of the car might be armed with a firearm. As a result the claimant was arrested, handcuffed, roughly searched and taken to a police station where no weapon was found. In the claimant’s action for damages for wrongful arrest, assault and false imprisonment the judge was not satisfied that the arrest was lawful because it had not been shown that the officer who put the information on the computer had reasonable grounds for making the entry. In allowing the Chief Constable’s appeal, the court held the critical issue in determining the lawfulness of any arrest was whether the arresting officer had acted reasonably in acting on the information received, that where an arrest was made on the basis of information on the police computer that entry was likely to provide the necessary objective justification but whether any particular entry did so depended on all the circumstances; it was not necessary to show that the officer who placed the entry on the computer had reasonable grounds for doing so; since the entry in question provided ample justification for the claimant’s arrest, the action could not succeed.