WA Police - What Classes as Reasonable Suspicion?

[Rod]

It took a few years but here is a couple winning their case against police in WA: Couple tasered by police awarded more than $1m in damages

I can't find anything that allows WA police to handcuff someone before arrest.

 

[sammy01]

Police Weapons: Australia | Law Library of Congress

The best bit is

(b) if the person is attempting to escape arrest by fleeing—do such a thing unless:

(i) the constable believes on reasonable grounds that doing that thing is necessary to protect life or to prevent serious injury to another person (including the constable); and

(ii) the person has, if practicable, been called on to surrender and the constable believes on reasonable grounds that the person cannot be apprehended in any other manner.[53]

So you have to read it all to get the context. But I read it as the cops can do whatever necessary - while using minimal force to apprehend the baddies.

So handcuffs prior to arrest could be reasonable for the purposes of apprehending them. Now given this guy turned off the road into a service station at 2am - maybe the cops saw this as an attempt to abscond - hence need for handcuffs to apprehend.

Now if it is a copper alone - like highway patrol and he intended to search the car - then cuffing the baddie in order to execute the search without concern old mate was gonna do a runner, would seem reasonable...

 

[Pete pan]

Police Weapons: Australia | Law Library of Congress

The best bit is

(b) if the person is attempting to escape arrest by fleeing—do such a thing unless:

(i) the constable believes on reasonable grounds that doing that thing is necessary to protect life or to prevent serious injury to another person (including the constable); and

(ii) the person has, if practicable, been called on to surrender and the constable believes on reasonable grounds that the person cannot be apprehended in any other manner.[53]

So you have to read it all to get the context. But I read it as the cops can do whatever necessary - while using minimal force to apprehend the baddies.

So handcuffs prior to arrest could be reasonable for the purposes of apprehending them. Now given this guy turned off the road into a service station at 2am - maybe the cops saw this as an attempt to abscond - hence need for handcuffs to apprehend.

Now if it is a copper alone - like highway patrol and he intended to search the car - then cuffing the baddie in order to execute the search without concern old mate was gonna do a runner, would seem reasonable...

S says it was an officer alone and signalled for him to pull over. He decided the petrol station was the safest place to stop the vehicle. S says it was just before an intersection and there was no other place unless you waited for the light to go green and then continue through intersection and find somewhere on the other side.

 

[sammy01]

Pete - all good - but can you, at least, see how another version exists and that it is as plausible as your mate's version. So especially a cop at 2am alone is gonna secure the occupant of the vehicle before continuing, given that the cop may well have perceived the driver as being erratic by going into the servo.

I'd have a bit more interest in this if there were not drugs / illegal stuff in the car. But there was... Now cops don't do searches every time they pull a car over, true? So the cop in question obviously felt there were grounds for a search and he was right... So what is the problem?

 

[Rod]

Police cannot secure a person unless they are arrested first or they resist arrest or attempt to flee. Police cannot go around accosting people, putting them into handcuffs on the off-chance they may flee or later be arrested. We don't have many rights but the right to freedom of movement is one we do have. A civil case of false imprisonment is possible if police unreasonably restrain or arrest you, even if only for 1 minute, and even if you are later arrested.

The trouble with the OP's friend is that the police may well say they searched first, then arrested and handcuffed S.

In the link I provided it seems clear the police lied as the judge clearly didn't believe their story. If the victims in this link hadn't been a professor of law and his wife, the case may well have gone the other way.