Everybody wants to be a hero who stops crimes like Superman, Spiderman, Batman, or just like your grandfather who is a police officer or like your CIA neighbor or your uncle’s friend who is part of FBI. The only problem is that you are just an ordinary citizen who doesn’t have an inch of authority to use force on someone who you just saw doing some illegal activity – Wait, what if you have the authority and what if you can use force to detain them? And what if you can just be an instant hero after that? Amazing isn’t it?
Before we answer on this question, we are to tackle first the grounds for citizen arrest.
Citizen’s arrest vary from various states. For instance, the law in Tennessee’s citizen arrest states that a private citizen can arrest someone when that person breaks the law in his presence. When you did not actually see that person breaking the law, you can still arrest him if you have the reasonable cause to believe he has committed felonies such as theft of property no less than $500, possession of illegal drugs and worst of all – murder. Felonies are the crimes punishable by a year or more than in prison by law.
Do you know there is a certain requirement before making the arrest?
Well, every country in the world has its own procedure and requirement to make the citizen arrest legal. Commonly, by law, you are required to inform the person to be arrested of the wrongful acts he committed before arresting. A ground notice will also do. As soon as possible, you ought to bring him to a police officer, and that police will be responsible in deciding whether detaining him or bringing him to magistrate. The role of magistrate is to determine the individual if he can be taken to the custody.
Are you allowed the use of force when arresting someone?
The use of force in the process can only be permitted if the person to be arrested resist or tried to flee. Generally, you are allowed to use any means necessary to restrain the suspect. You can also use handcuffs if you have one. As much as possible do not use deadly force or more force than necessary to avoid the suspect in suing or pressing criminal charges on you. Furthermore, you are also allowed to search the suspect during your arrest.
You might also be interested about the profile of the suspect. You have all the rights in the world to do so. One way to do this is to look for websites that offer arrest records results in US or any websites that has warrant search [http://blog.persopo.com/] tool.