Breach Of Peace

Breach of Peach is a violation of a public order, the offence of disturbing the public peace. It is a criminal offence that occurs when a person engages in some form of disorderly conduct, such as fighting or causing excessively loud noise.
Breach of peace is a common law power available to the police to maintain public law and order. In the English case of RV. Chief constable of Deron and Cornwell, ex parte central Electricity Generating Board (1982) GB 458, where demonstrators sought to prevent a survey of land by the Electricity Board, Lord Denning defined a breach of the Peace as follows:
“There is a breach of the peace wherever a person who is lawfully carrying out his work is unlawfully and physically prevented by another from doing it. He is entitled by law peacefully to go on with his work on his lawful occasions. If anyone unlawfully or physically obstructs the worker, by lying down or chaining himself to a rig or the like, he is guilty of a breach of the peace. Even if this were not enough. I think that their unlawful conduct gives rise to a reasonable apprehension of a breach of the peace. It is at once likely that the lawful worker will result to self-help by removing the obstruction by force from the vicinity of the work so that he obstructs no longer. This demand would itself be an assault and battery. unless it was justified as being done by way of self-help… But in deciding whether them is a breach of the peace on the apprehension of it, the law does not go into the rights or wrongs of the matter, or whether it is justified by self-help or not. Suffice it that. The peace is broken or is likely to be broken by one or another of those present with the result that any citizen can as certainly as police officer can intervene to stop breaches”.
In the cause of Nelson Ohanyer & 90rs V. IGP (1957) SCNLR 213, the correct test for determine whether a conduct is likely to cause a breach of the peace was articulated. According to Jibome AG, the test to be applied is whether the conduct of the accused was such that a breach of the peace right reasonably have ensued and the fact that no breach of the peace, took place is irrelevant”.
In conclusion for there to be a breach of peace in my opinion the following conditions from can English case is suggested:
There must be the clearest of circumstance and sufficiently real and present threat to the peace to justify the extreme step to depriving of his liberally as a citizen who is not at the time act unlawfully.
The threat must be coming from the person who is to be arrested.
The conduct must clearly interfere with the rights of others.
The national consequence of the enchant must be violence from a third party.
The conduct of the person to be arrested must be unreasonable.
Per schiemann L.J in Bibbing V. Chief Constable of Essex (2000) All ER (D) 487.

Nkechi Bright – Ewere