The legal issues that will be addressed are whether the arrests of Enid and Ruth are lawful. Ss24 and 24A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE 1984) will be used in reaching a conclusion for each case respectively.
Firstly, consideration will be given as to whether the arrest of Enid by Amjit was lawful by applying ss24a PACE 1984 to the facts of the case.
In order for Amjit to lawfully arrest Enid it must be satisfied that she was in the act of, or there were reasonable grounds for suspecting that she was committing an indictable offence in order to meet the requirement of ss24a (1)(a) of PACE 1984. Criminal damage would be the offence in this case which is a triable either way offence therefore is indictable. Amjit …show more content…
It requires that the summary arrest is exercisable only if it appears to the person making the arrest that it is not reasonably practicable for a constable to make it instead. As a constable was not present at the scene at that time it could be deemed appropriate for Amjit to exercise the power of arrest on Enid.
Consideration will now be given as to whether the arrest of Ruth by PC swift was lawful by applying ss24 Pace 1984 to the facts of the case.
PC Swift was aware that the offence of criminal damage had been committed at the local allotment. He had reasonable grounds for suspecting that the guilty person could be Ruth as she matched the description provided by Police. This satisfies the requirement of ss24 (3)(b). It does not matter that Ruth is not in the process of committing a crime as reasonable grounds for suspicion are present.
In order for the arrest to be lawful and meet with the requirement of S24 (4) a necessity test under ss24 (5) is required.
Ss24 (5)(a) requires that the arrest is necessary to enable the name of the person in question to be ascertained. Ruth refused to give her name to PC Swift therefore this requirement has been met. This is important as Enid may have provided Ruth 's name whilst under