While some shopkeepers are welcoming the expanded power to detain thieves, others say it could get someone killed, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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Retailers to get new powers of arrest
The government will amend the Crimes Act to give people greater powers to detain thieves, following the recommendation of some members of a ministerial advisory group on retail crime. The new legislation will allow anyone to intervene at any time, regardless of the value of stolen goods – a change from the current rules which restrict citizen arrests to nighttime hours and only for stolen goods worth at least $1000.
Under the new law, people making arrests must contact police and use only “reasonable force”, which justice minister Paul Goldsmith describes as “not necessarily a headlock, just holding someone steady”. While acknowledging the potential risks to physical safety – which could be magnified if more thieves start carrying weapons – he insists the reforms will help deter retail crime.
Critics call law ‘shameful’ and ‘dangerous’
While some shop owners are celebrating the change, others are fuming. Retail NZ’s Carolyn Young says the move is “extremely dangerous” and the majority of her members strongly oppose it. “Most retailers train their staff to prioritise their own safety rather than try to recover stolen goods. We cannot condone retail workers putting themselves into dangerous and volatile situations,” she says.
First Union general secretary Dennis Maga describes the policy as “disastrously daft” and a “half-baked encouragement of US-style vigilantism”, reports the Herald’s Adam Pearse, while Labour’s police spokesperson Ginny Anderson calls the policy “shameful” and “dangerous”, adding, “I fear that it’s only a matter of time before tragedy strikes because of [the government’s] negligence.”
The legal experts’ take
Writing in The Spinoff this morning, legal academics Andrew Geddis and Henry Benson-Pope lay out the “many, many” risks inherent in the government’s proposal. They note that while Goldsmith has presented the law change as a response to retail crime, the new citizen’s arrest powers could be used for any offending. “[And] what if someone thinks that an offence is being committed and it then turns out that one hasn’t been? Does that then mean there is no legal defence available for the purported citizen arrester?
“Alternatively, if the defence is going to apply any time someone ‘reasonably believes’ that a Crimes Act offence is being committed, then that’s a pretty expansive field for wannabe vigilante heroes. Brian Tamaki, for instance, already has expressed that he is ‘excited’ at the thought of getting ‘increased powers to police … where law and order has failed’.”
Canada’s ‘Lucky Moose amendment’
A main proponent of the move was ministerial advisory group leader Sunny Kaushal, a former chair of the Dairy and Business Owners Group. In his submission, he highlighted an infamous citizen’s arrest in Canada in 2010 which eventually led to similar legislation. The so-called “Lucky Moose amendment” came about after Toronto shopkeeper David Chen chased down a serial shoplifter only to be charged with assault and forcible confinement. Chen’s acquittal amid a “popular outcry that turned him into a kind of folk hero” spurred a law change, reports the Globe and Mail.
Under the previous Canadian law, a perpetrator had to be caught red-handed for a citizen’s arrest to be legal. In 2013, it was changed to allow arrests to be made within a “reasonable” period of time after witnessing a crime. As in New Zealand, many retailers strongly rejected their new legal powers. “We would not, under any circumstances, urge our employees to chase a car that’s stealing gas, or jump over the counter to try and take the law into their own hands,” said Dave Bryans, CEO of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association.
