Police Powers: Stop and Search

Friday 10 December 2004 at 11:26 pm | In News | Post Comment

R (on the application of Laporte) v Chief Constable of Gloucestershire Constabulary (CA) (2004)
[Police powers – detention – breach of the peace – police not entitled to send coach containing protesters back to London]
D, the police stopped and searched under s 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 the coach in which the claimant was travelling to a US air base to demonstrate against the war in Iraq. The police feared a breach of the peace at the destination. The coaches were returned to London with a police escort, which prevented them from stopping or leaving the motorway. C applied for judicial review.

Held: Forcibly returning the claimant to London was unlawful, but the decision to prevent the claimant from proceeding to the airbase was not unlawful. To have delayed taking action until the coach passengers had reached the air base could have provoked the very disturbance which the preventive action was intended to avoid, and in some situations, preventing a breach of the peace would only be possible if action were taken which risked affecting a wholly innocent individual. But forcibly returning the claimant to London was disproportionate and was not justifiable at common law.

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