Citizens' Arrest Blog
- Aryav Sharma
- Apr 30
- 2 min read
Nearly all laws in the United States aim to protect and serve the public. Usually, there is an officer of the law who enforces these laws and makes arrests based of whom brakes these laws, but not just officers of the law can make arrests. There is a common misconception that only those who are in power can enforce laws, the rest forced to listen and submit, but this is far from true. Citizens can make arrests in a process called, you guessed it, a citizens' arrest. This concept, while fairly simple, is applied to real situations fascinatingly. In a way that I believe should be shared,
A citizens' arrest is an arrest made by a citizen rather than by a police officer or another law enforcement officer. This doesn't mean anyone can arrest another for any reason they please. Only a few unlawful crimes are allowed. A citizen can detain someone based on solid evidence that they may have committed a crime. What's important to note is that anyone can detain another in hopes of arrest, but the crime committed by the one getting arrested has to fit certain criteria. Once again, this does not mean one can detain anyone, but only on solid suspicion.
In Commonwealth v. Weston G. Bean, Jr, the idea of citizens' arrest is used in a way that I believe to be facnincating. The issue was dealing with an alleged illegal arrest by a police officer. A WestBridgewaterr resident had recently had their car stolen and reported it as seen in Brockton. A police officer from WesBridgewaterer had been told to report this to Brockton police. On his way there, he had spotted the vehicle, had reported it to Brockton, but had been turned down as they had been too busy. A few days later, another, different officer from West Bridgewater had spotted the car. He had not known where he was West Bridgewater or Brockton). The officer walked towards the car with a revolver drawn. The defendant had then tried to drive away when the officer's revolver went off and wounded the defendant. The officer was out of his jurisdiction. Since he was out of jurisdiction, the officer was not tectinaly a officer but rather a citizen, so the issue was whether or not the arrest was a valid citizen's arrest.
In the opinion of the court, the argument went as follows. The Brokton police would not be able to help, and did not. A sufficient amount of information was found to indicate that the stolen car would be in the vicinity of where the arrest had occurred. The arrest was also necessary, as deemed by the court. As a citizen's arrest can only be allowed with probable cause, the arrest was ended in the officer's favor
25 Mass. App. Ct. 980
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