Police Law Blog European Decisions Statutory Materials

Gangbos – all in it together

  • Injunctions to prevent gang-related violence, pursuant to Policing and Crime Act 2009 section 34.
  • Orders are not confined to restraining particular conduct relating to the individual.
  • The court is entitled to consider the conduct attributed to the gang as a whole.

Football banning orders – all or nothing

  • A football banning order must apply to all regulated matches.
  • A magistrates’ court may not permit a person to attend some matches but not others.
  • Attendance at a football match does not engage article 8.

Damages for unlawful arrest, consequent assault and unlawful detention

  • The High Court assessed damages for three Claimants at £2,500, £11,950 and £7,000.
  • Police officers’ denying the allegations against them during disciplinary investigations and a criminal trial could not sound in aggravated damages;
  • No damages for being cross-examined robustly by the officers’ counsel in criminal proceedings.

Words on arrest

  • It is not an essential condition of a lawful arrest that a constable should verbally formulate a charge.
  • What is required is that the arrested person be told the act for which they are being arrested.

Time to go? Compulsory retirement of police officers.

  • It is a legitimate aim for police forces “to achieve efficiency by reducing officer numbers with certainty”.
  • Police Forces had no other means of achieving certainty in their staff reductions other than by the use of A19, due to the limited ways in which officers can be dismissed.
  • This finding demonstrates that the crucial question of whether a PCP is justified may depend on how the “legitimate aim” is phrased.