Dog trapped in car

I was in the middle of my Saturday morning clinic yesterday when the practice received a phone call from a concerned client. She was concerned about a dog, a white German shepherd that had been locked in a car since 2 a.m. and was now, at 12 p.m. on a warm and muggy day, apparently in distress. The lady had phoned the police, but according to the caller, they were not very interested in the matter. She wanted my advice as to what she could do. I told her to smash one of the car windows so that the dog could at least get some air and possibly be released from the car’s confines.

So, what is the legal position when one deliberately smashes a window of someone else’s car?  The offence of criminal damage in section 1 (1) of The Criminal Damage Act 1971 reads: “A person who, without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property belonging to another intending to destroy or damage any such property or being reckless as to whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged shall be guilty of an offence”.

The defence to the action that I advised are contained in the phrase “without lawful excuse”. This defence is given in section 5(2)(b) of the Act:

A person charged with an offence to which this section applies shall… be treated for those purposes as having a lawful excuse… if he destroyed or damaged… property in question… in order to protect property belonging to himself or another… and at the time of the act…he believed: (i) that the property… was in immediate need of protection; and (ii) that the means of protection adopted…would be reasonable having regard to all the circumstances.

In addition to the advice above that I gave, I also recommended that she should notify the police of her proposed actions; primarily as I thought that it might motivate them into action. Unbeknownst to me, my conversation was overheard by a retired police officer. Her comments were that that was exactly the advice she would have given. In fact, she said, that was the primary use she made of her truncheon whilst she was serving as an officer.

It appears then that the advice is good.
2012 (C) VJ