Hough v Chief Constable of Staffordshire Police

[Clive D. W. Feather]

In article <0949AF853902D311AF530008C7C9AE22018048FD@irlbdc.ie.baltimore 
.com>, Mary Kirwan <mkirwan@baltimore.com> writes
>Quite bizarre.
>
>The entire issue should revolve around whether the belief was reasonable,
>which has to involve a consideration of the information in the computer
>record. If it said 'Johnny likes to wear a red hat', that I presume would
>not suffice to found a reasonably held suspicion of likely wrongdoing..

That's what the judge said:

>That was not to say that any
>computer entry would of itself necessarily justify an arrest. If there
>was no urgency in the situation and if in the light of the whole
>surrounding circumstances (see O'Hara at p298) some further
>inquiry was clearly called for before suspicion could properly
>crystallise, then the entry alone would not suffice.

In other words, the fact of an entry is not justification, but the 
contents of the entry might be. The "red hat" entry clearly doesn't 
justify an arrest; the court seemed to think that the firearm entry did 
(and I don't see it raised as a dispute in the case; the arrestable 
offence was "unlawful possession of a firearm").

>Even if the information in the record was highly sensitive, enough of it
>would have to be revealed to properly ground the suspicion, or the arrest
>should not stand - the need to uphold the legality of the arrest would have
>to yield to the necessity to protect the sensitive information. Cant say I
>understand the argument here, even at a stretch.

Um, the argument seems perfectly valid to me.

If policeman A has reasonable grounds to arrest X, the arrest is valid:
   - the grounds must, of themselves, justify the arrest;
   - policeman A must truly believe the information he has.
   - the fact that the information is wrong does not make it false
     arrest.

If policeman A got his belief because policeman B lied (either in person 
or via a computer database), then there is a cause of action against 
policeman B, but not for false arrest, and not against A for anything. 
Such causes of action might be negligence, conspiracy to pervert to 
course of justice, or breach of the Data Protection Act.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather, writing for himself  | Home: <clive@davros.org>
Tel: +44 20 8371 1138 (work)             | Web:  <http://www.davros.org>
Fax: +44 20 8371 4037 (D-fax)            | Work: <clive@demon.net>
Written on my laptop; please observe the Reply-To address