The court was asked whether a police constable was a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress contrary to s. 5(1)(a) of the Public Order Act 1986.
Held: Glidewell LJ discussed the offence under section 5 where words used toward the police officer were the basis of the charge: ‘I find nothing in the context of the Act of 1986 to persuade me that a police officer may not be a person who is caused harassment, alarm or distress by the various kinds of words and conduct to which section 5(1) applies. I would therefore answer the question in the affirmative, that a police officer can be a person who is likely to be caused harassment and so on. However, that is not to say that the opposite is necessarily the case, namely, it is not to say that every police officer in this situation is to be assumed to be a person who is caused harassment. Very frequently words and behaviour with which police officers will be wearily familiar will have little emotional impact on them save that of boredom. It may well be that, in appropriate circumstances, justices will decide (indeed they might decide in the present case) as a question offact that the words and behaviour were not likely in all the circumstances to cause harassment, alarm or distress to either of the police officers. That is a question of fact for the justices to be decided in all the circumstances, the time, the place, the nature of the words used, who the police officers are, and so on.’
McCullough m noted that the amendment to the 1986 Act meant that it was ‘not the likely physical reaction to the conduct complained of, but the likely mental reaction to it’ which now mattered. He added: ‘It is improbable in the extreme that any police officer would ever be provoked by threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour to cause a breach of the peace, but it is by no means impossible that such an officer may not feel harassed, alarmed or distressed as a result of such words or behaviour. This distinguishes the present case from Marsh v. Arscott.’
Glidewell LJ, McCullough J
[1989] 88 Cr App Rep 261, [1988] 3 All ER 449, [1988] Crim LR 848, [1989] 1 WLR 88, (1988) 153 JP 85
Public Order Act 1986 5(1)(a)
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Harvey v Director of Public Prosecutions Admn 17-Nov-2011
The appellant had been approached and searched by police officers and swore at them. He now appealed against a conviction under section 5 of the 1986 Act.
Held: The use of the word ‘fuck’ was common in such situations. Neither officer had . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime, Police
Leading Case
Updated: 09 November 2021; Ref: scu.449712
