Affray

Before writing my statement for me, PC Francis said he was recording that I had been involved in an "affray". Curious to know what kind of activity P.C.Francis envisaged that I had participated in, I searched for the most precise legal definition of the term that I could find.

In several places on the Internet, one definition took precedence by its precision and by the frequency with which it was cited: "criminal law. The fighting of two or more persons, in some public place, to the terror of the people."

I was not involved in fighting; I remained throughout the incident at the bottom of my back garden, which is not a public place; and apart from myself and the three people who assaulted me, the only people present were part of the invading party, and therefore unlikely to be terrified.

If what P.C.Francis meant by the word is anything like that definition, it was clearly a most inappropriate term to use.

A more concise definition, "a fight in a public place", is no more pertinent.

The website http://www.police-law.co.uk, however, provides a broader definition of the offence, which makes better sense in relation to what actually happened:

"A person is guilty of affray if he uses or threatens unlawful violence towards another and his conduct is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety (A person of reasonable firmness need not actually be present). "

The only problem here is with the observer, whether actual or notional: the threats of violence and the actual assaults were directed specifically at me, so an observer who was not part of the invading party would have little reason to fear for themselves. The assaults and threats were intended to make me want to move house.

P.S. In his "Record of Interview", PC Francis wrote, "You've been found that you're responsible for that affray". It was of course the dishonest PC Francis who "found" that.

10th August 2006: Today I received a letter from Sussex Police Corporate Development Department. In answer to my application under the Data Protection Act to know whether it had been recorded that I had been responsible for an affray, the Information Compliance Manager, referring to a record on the Crime Reporting System, said: "I can find no instance of the word affray within that record."