Answers
Thread 1
What is the question about in general legal terms? What exactly are you being asked to do?
In general terms this question asks you to consider the legality of a number of actions taken by the police to deal with perceived or actual incidents of public disorder.
It is essential when dealing with these questions to remember the relevance of the Human Rights Act 1998. As a public authority, the police are obliged to act in a way that is compatible with the ECHR. Given that protests might well engage rights under Articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR it is important that police action is judged against the standard of proportionality so that rights are protected whilst still allowing the police to perform their statutory duties to keep the peace and protect the public.
You will need to consider both statutory and common law concepts, in particular the Public Order Act 1986 (POA) and the common law relating to breach of the peace..
Note the instruction carefully. You are not asked to comment specifically
on the legal liability of the other protestors, only Max. Towards the end
of the question (see Thread 10), you are asked to consider the legality of
something Inspector Ringo did. When this question was set for an examination,
many students discussed in detail the range of possible offences that the
crowd attacking the police station might have committed. This was not required.