Introduction
The question of whether police officers owe a duty of care in the tort of negligence is a complex area of law. While police forces are public bodies tasked with protecting citizens, the courts have been traditionally reluctant to impose a private law duty of care on them for how they carry out their core functions. This essay will argue that while the general rule, established for public policy reasons, is that the police do not owe a duty of care in negligence when investigating or failing to prevent crime, recent case law has clarified that they do owe a duty not to cause harm through their own positive actions.
The General ‘No-Duty’ Position
The starting point for the modern law is the landmark House of Lords decision in Hill v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [1989] AC 53. The claimant was the mother of the final victim of the "Yorkshire Ripper". She argued the police had been negligent in their investigation and had a duty of care to protect her daughter. The House of Lords rejected this claim, holding that the police did not owe a duty of care to individual members of the public at large to prevent crime.
The court’s reasoning was based on two main factors. Firstly, there was insufficient proximity between the police and the victim, who was one of a vast number of potential victims. Secondly, and more importantly, the court relied heavily on public policy. It was considered that imposing such a duty would lead to "defensive policing", where officers might be more concerned with avoiding lawsuits than with catching criminals. Furthermore, it would divert police resources from fighting crime to defending civil litigation (Horsey and Rackley, 2021). This principle, often referred to as the 'Hill immunity', established a general rule that the police are not liable for omissions, that is, for failing to prevent harm caused by a third party.
Reinforcement and Refinement of the General Rule
The principles from Hill have been consistently applied and confirmed in subsequent cases. In Brooks v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2005] 1 WLR 1495, the court held that the police did not owe a duty of care to a victim of crime for the way they investigated the offence, even where the alleged failings caused psychiatric injury. Lord Steyn stated that the core principle of Hill was that the absence of a duty was to ensure the police could perform their duties of investigating and suppressing crime without being unduly hampered.
More recently, the Supreme Court considered the issue in Michael v Chief Constable of South Wales Police [2015] UKSC 2. In this case, a woman was murdered by her ex-partner after her 999 call was mishandled by the police. The majority of the Supreme Court held that the police owed no duty of care. They explicitly rejected the idea that a 999 call was enough to create a special relationship or an "assumption of responsibility" by the police towards the caller. The court affirmed that, for public policy reasons, the police are not liable in negligence for their failure to protect citizens from harm caused by criminals.
The Exception: A Duty for Positive Acts
A significant clarification of the law came in Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2018] UKSC 4. An elderly woman was injured when two police officers, in the course of attempting to arrest a suspected drug dealer on a busy street, collided with her and knocked her over. The Supreme Court held that the police were liable in negligence.
Lord Reed, giving the lead judgment, clarified that the Hill principle did not provide a blanket immunity from suit. He explained that the issue in Hill and Michael was an omission (a failure to act), whereas the situation in Robinson involved a positive act by the police that directly caused the injury. The Court held that the police, like ordinary citizens, have a duty of care to avoid causing foreseeable personal injury when they create a risk of harm. In this case, the officers' decision to attempt an arrest in a manner that was likely to cause a risk to passers-by was a positive act for which they could be held liable. The police are subject to the ordinary principles of negligence where their own actions create a danger.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the answer to whether police officers owe a duty of care is not straightforward. The general rule, derived from Hill and confirmed in Michael, is that they do not owe a duty of care to individuals for failures in their core functions of investigating and preventing crime. This position is justified by the courts on the grounds of public policy. However, this is not a blanket immunity. The case of Robinson has made it clear that where the police carry out a positive act which foreseeably causes physical injury, they are subject to the same duty of care as anyone else. The law therefore draws a key distinction between omissions, for which there is generally no liability, and positive acts, for which a duty of care is owed.
References
- Brooks v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2005] 1 WLR 1495
- Hill v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [1989] AC 53
- Horsey, K. and Rackley, E. (2021) Tort Law. 7th edn. Oxford University Press.
- Michael v Chief Constable of South Wales Police [2015] UKSC 2
- Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2018] UKSC 4
