Home Community Insights Law Enforcement Agents Are Permitted To Use Force on You

Law Enforcement Agents Are Permitted To Use Force on You

Law Enforcement Agents Are Permitted To Use Force on You
A police officer search Catholics before they attend a Mass to celebrate Good Friday in Abuja, Nigeria Friday, April 18, 2014. Nigerian Catholics joined Christians around the world in celebrating Holy Week ahead of Easter Sunday. (AP Photo/ Sunday Alamba)

I have heard so many people bragging most times that police officers or the agents of the EFCC came to effect an arrest on them and they resisted the officers, in fact attacked the officers and the officers took to their heels.

Whilst the act of resisting arrest or resisting law enforcement agencies might seem heroic, be it as it may, it is highly dangerous and risky from all angles and no lawyer can ever advise you to resist arrest no matter the circumstances; whether the arrest or search was illegal, without warrant or otherwise. There is no circumstance you are ever justified by law and even by common sense to resist a law enforcement agent, especially an armed one.

The reason for the act of resisting a law enforcement officer from effecting arrest on you is dangerous is that the officer carrying out the arrest has been empowered by law to use reasonable force where necessary on any person he is effecting arrest on and the person is resisting. They also have been authorized by law to use deadly force on any person who is resisting arrest in so far as the deadly force applied is commensurate to the resistance posed by the suspect. By the use of deadly force, an officer empowered by law to even shoot a suspect who is resisting arrest. 

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Reasonable force has been defined to be the appropriate level of physical force that a law enforcement agent may employ under a threatening situation to sufficiently protect himself from personal harm, harm to others, or loss of property. It simply means that force and no more which a reasonable person, in like circumstances, would judge to be necessary to prevent an injury or loss and can include deadly force if it is reasonable to believe that such force is necessary to avoid injury or risk to one’s life. Therefore, this reasonable force can be a deadly force and the use of guns or other deadly weapons can be permissible as the circumstances demand. 

So whatever the circumstances may be, it is dangerous to resist arrest, you might lose your life at it and the officers will be justified in shooting you dead. What is more noble and advisable for you is to comply with the officers, even if the arrest or search carried on you is illegal or without a warrant, comply with the officers at that point in time, subsequently you can file a charge against them for illegal arrest/ detention or search without a warrant through your lawyer.

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