Buckley & Ors v Chief Officer of the Thames Valley Police

For an arrest based on reasonable suspicion, the arresting officer must actually suspect the person and must have objectively reasonable grounds for doing so. Suspicion is a state of mind well short of belief or proof of guilt, and the applicable threshold is low.

The available information must be assessed cumulatively rather than by asking whether each item independently establishes reasonable grounds. An officer may rely on information supplied by other officers or informants, provided the assembled information gives reasonable grounds for suspicion. The officer ordinarily has no obligation at the outset of an investigation to examine possible defences or alibis, although a verified alibi may dispel an otherwise reasonable suspicion.

Three teenage brothers brought proceedings against the police for wrongful arrest. They had been arrested following a fatal hit-and-run collision involving a white Transit van. The van had previously been driven by another person with the same surname, and information available to the arresting officer linked the brothers by their number, ages, location, surname, family history and knowledge of a similar van.

The Oxford County Court dismissed the claim. His Honour Judge McIntyre held that the arresting officer had reasonable grounds to suspect the brothers, although they were subsequently proved to have had no involvement in the offence.

The brothers appealed. The central issue was whether the information in the arresting officer’s mind, considered objectively and cumulatively, supplied reasonable grounds for suspicion under section 24(6) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

1. Appeal dismissed. The arresting officer actually suspected the claimants and had objectively reasonable grounds for doing so. The arrests were therefore lawful. Pill and Moore-Bick LJJ agreed with Hughes LJ, although they expressed differing views about the precise basis on which a possible family connection could be inferred.

2. The questions were whether the arresting officer in fact suspected the persons arrested and whether he had objectively reasonable grounds for that suspicion. Only the information in that officer’s mind was relevant. However, an arresting officer may rely on information received from other officers or informants. A bare instruction to arrest, unsupported by the reasons for suspicion, would be insufficient.

3. Suspicion is a state of mind well short of belief, proof or a prima facie case of guilt. The threshold for reasonable grounds is low. A person may lawfully be arrested on reasonable grounds even though later inquiries establish that the person was innocent.

4. The officer was not obliged to investigate the claimants’ asserted alibis before making the arrests. Requiring reasonable grounds for suspicion does not impose an obligation at the outset of an investigation to examine possible defences. A promptly verified alibi may dispel an existing suspicion, but no such verification had occurred here.

5. A family relationship or close association with a suspect cannot, standing alone, necessarily establish reasonable grounds for suspicion. It may nevertheless contribute to reasonable suspicion when considered with other relevant information. The decisions in Raissi were distinguishable because the challenged suspicion there rested solely on the relationship with a principal suspect.

6. The information available had to be assessed cumulatively. It included the number and general description of the youths, the geography, the connection between the van and the surname Buckley, the possible connection between the two Buckley households, the family history of car crime and the mother’s statement revealing knowledge of a white Transit van apparently used irregularly. Although individual matters were equivocal, together they supplied sufficient reasonable grounds. The claimants’ eventual innocence did not make the arrests unlawful.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The court unanimously dismissed the appeal in [2009] EWCA Civ 356 and upheld the conclusion that the arrests were lawful.

2. Oxford County Court: His Honour Judge McIntyre dismissed the wrongful-arrest claim, holding that the arresting constable had reasonable grounds to suspect the claimants of involvement in the offence.