Arrest Without Warrant in UK Law

This is quite sufficient to give him the opportunity of volunteering information which would avoid the arrest or, alternatively, although I must personally express some reservation on this aspect of the law as it appears from the authorities, permit forceable resistance against arrest.

It is the arresting officer's own account of the information which he had which matters, not what was observed by or known to anyone else. It is the arresting officer's own account of the information which he had which matters, not what was observed by or known to anyone else.

1. If a policeman arrests without warrant upon reasonable suspicion of felony, or of other crime of a sort which does not require a warrant, he must in ordinary circumstances inform the person arrested of the true ground of arrest. He is not entitled to keep the reason to himself or to give a reason which is not the true reason. In other words, a citizen is entitled to know on what charge or on suspicion of what crime he is seized.

4. The requirement that he should be so informed does not mean that technical or precise language need be used. The matter is a matter of substance, and turns on the elementary proposition that in this country a person is, prima facie, entitled to his freedom and is only required to submit to restraints on his freedom if he knows in substance the reason why it is claimed that this restraint should be imposed.

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.

The Wednesbury principles, as they are usually referred to, are applicable to determining the lawfulness of the exercise of the statutory discretion of a constable under section 2(4) of the Criminal Law Act 1967, not only in proceedings for judicial review but also for the purpose of founding a cause of action at common law for damages for that species of trespass to the person known as false imprisonment, for which the action in the instant case is brought.

My reasons are these: this statute is concerned with the safety of all of Her Majesty's subjects who use the roads in this country. The most effective way to do it is by arresting him then and there. The police have to act at once, on the facts as they appear on the spot: and they should be justified by the facts as they appear to them at the time and not on any ex post facto analysis of the situation.