Arrest on suspicion of commission of arrestable offence - opportunity to commit offence sufficient to found reasonable suspicion

Cumming and others v Chief Constable of Northumbria Police: CA (Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, Lords Justice Brooke and Latham): 17 December 2003

The five claimants, employees in a department concerned with monitoring recordings made by closed-circuit television cameras, had been arrested following the discovery of tampering with tapes that showed the possible commission of an offence.

On their claims for damages for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment, the judge had found the police had acted in good faith, had reasonable grounds for suspecting the claimants of committing an arrestable offence, and that the decision to arrest was a proper exercise of their discretion.

The claimants appealed on the grounds that, since they had no links with the suspected offender, were all of good character and mere opportunity could not amount to a fact sufficient to found the reasonable suspicion required by section 24(6) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the judge was wrong in both latter respects.

David Wilby QC and David Callan (instructed by Thompsons, Newcastle upon Tyne) for the claimants; Simon Freeland QC and Toby Wynn (instructed by Crutes, Newcastle upon Tyne) for the defendant.

Held, dismissing the appeal, that there was nothing in principle either preventing opportunity from amounting to reasonable grounds for suspicion sufficient to entitle the police to make an arrest or with arresting more than one person, even if the crime could only have been committed by one person (see Hussein v Chong Fook Kam [1970] AC 942); that on the evidence the judge had been entitled to accept that the police had taken all reasonable steps and been left with the fact that one or more of those arrested must have been the culprit; and that, since article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights was satisfied by the requirement that there be reasonable grounds for an arrest, the convention did not require the court to evaluate the exercise of discretion in any different way from the exercise of any other executive discretion.