The Police and the Law
| Date | 01 October 1952 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X5202500402 |
| Published date | 01 October 1952 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
THE
POLICE
AND
THE
LAW
23I
the need in peace-time for the kind of mutual aid which was common
ageneration ago, and except for comparatively rare occasions during
the second world war when police reinforcements went to the blitzed
cities few serving officers can have been tested on the administrative,
organisational and welfare problems involved in
the
operation, while
still fewer of the present special constables shared the responsibility
or the realism of local duty when the resident officers have been
dispatched on mutual aid to a distant place.
The
necessary financial provision for such realism may be a hurdle
difficult to negotiate in times of financial stringency
but
someone
must have successfully negotiated aformidable financial obstacle
in sending the Yorkshire Territorial paratroopers as a piece of training
realism to hold
the
Rhine. No thoughtful citizen will question its
value as a sound speculative investment, and with interest rates as
tight as they are, it may yet pay a very handsome dividend.
The
Police and the Law
PROCEDURE ON ARREST
WITHOUT
WARRANT
IN a note on this subject which appeared last year (Vol. xxiv, page 166)
a full account was given of the facts of a case which subsequently
came before the House of Lords on appeal. In John Lewis and Co. Ltd.
v. Tims (1952, IT.L.R. 1132) the House of Lords upheld the ruling
of the Court of Appeal on the first point dealt with in that note, namely,
the procedure to be adopted on arresting adeaf person,
but
reversed
the decision on the second point, namely, whether or not a person
arrested without warrant must be immediately or forthwith brought
before a justice of the peace or the Police.
The
House of Lords has
declared
that
where the power given by the common law to arrest a
person without awarrant on suspicion of felony is exercised, it is
not
necessary
that
he should be brought before ajustice of
the
peace or the
Police immediately or
forthwith:
provided that he is brought as
speedily as is reasonably possible. In this case, detectives employed
by a London store properly arrested awoman on suspicion of shop-
lifting and brought
her
to the office of the store to obtain authority from
asenior officer of the store to prosecute.
It
was a regulation of the
store
that
only a senior officer of the store was authorised to institute
criminal proceedings.
The
person arrested was detained against
her
will in the office while the senior officer made some inquiries and
summoned the Police who, on arrival, took
her
to the police station.
On the facts
the
length of
her
detention in
the
store office was
not
unreasonable,
the
regulation of the store was a reasonable one to have
made, and she was held not to have heen falsely imprisoned during that
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