Citizen’s arrest is a temporary power granted to ordinary citizens to detain criminal suspects until law enforcement personnel can assume custody. It can be traced back to English common law during the Middle Ages, but is discouraged by modern law enforcement due to the risk of personal injury or death. The ideal circumstance is to catch the criminal suspect in the very act of committing a crime, but detaining an armed or physically powerful suspect can be extremely dangerous. Police officers often suggest that citizens observe the suspect and the crime scene and provide a physical description or license plate number.
Despite what many people think, the concept of arresting a citizen is not to evade legitimate law enforcement or arbitrarily detain people without evidence of a crime. Today, it exists more as an emergency or temporary power granted to ordinary citizens at the behest of law enforcement agencies.
Citizen arrest means that a private citizen has the right to detain criminal suspects until law enforcement personnel can assume custody. The practice can be traced back to English common law during the Middle Ages, although each country or state can change the rules of engagement. During the early days of modern justice systems, making a citizen’s arrest was a much more common practice. The merchants routinely detained shoplifters and burglars caught in the act, often taking them straight to a local police officer’s office for trial. As criminals became better armed and law enforcement became more readily available, the popularity of this type of arrest seemed to wane.
Modern law enforcement strongly discourages untrained civilians from making a citizen’s arrest. The risk of personal injury or death is too high and the average response time of trained police officers is significantly faster. But under certain circumstances, such an arrest may provide enough time for the proper authorities to arrive. One of the main problems with arresting a citizen, however, is the possibility of making a mistake. Unlike a failed attempt to resuscitate a victim through CPR, “Good Samaritan” protection for private citizens detaining an innocent suspect is very little or even absent.
One criterion for arresting a legal citizen is the immediacy of the crime. The ideal circumstance is to catch the criminal suspect in the very act of committing a crime. A person witnessing a robbery may grab the robber and hold him until a police officer arrives, for example.
Another scenario for a proper citizen’s arrest would be a serious potential for a crime to be committed soon. If a person saw a masked man with a crowbar walking towards a vehicle, it can reasonably be assumed that he is about to commit a crime. The witness can detain the masked man. This would still be true even if the “crime” turns out to be a misunderstanding. If someone sees a man climb over a broken window, he cannot be held liable for false arrest if it turns out that the man is the owner of the building who has lost his keys.
Because the act of detaining an armed or physically powerful suspect can be extremely dangerous, police officers often suggest that citizens spend their time observing the suspect and the crime scene. If the witness can provide a physical description of the suspect or a license plate number, the police may be able to find the suspect on their own. The safest equivalent is a signed statement, intending to file a criminal complaint later. Sometimes, a police officer will ask a witness or victim to tell the suspect that he has been placed under city arrest. This gives the police more legal authority to detain the suspect until he can be properly tried in the legal system.
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