The University of Toronto’s Jonathan Dawe raises one concern with the current push to expand the average citizen’s powers of arrest.
The University of Toronto’s Jonathan Dawe raises one concern with the current push to expand the average citizen’s powers of arrest.
“The traditional policy of the law has been to try and leave arrests up to the professionals — the police — wherever possible,” said Jonathan Dawe, a criminal lawyer and adjunct professor at the University of Toronto. “There is a concern that untrained citizens might arrest in situations where it isn’t really justified, and a further concern about citizens putting themselves in dangerous situations where someone — themselves, the person they are arresting or innocent bystanders — might get hurt.”