Citizens have a right to ask police to leave their premises – PM

A man’s home is his castle, so any police officer entering private property must follow a set of basic rules.

“The fundamental principle is that a man’s home is his castle. You can enter if you can reasonably say an offence is about to be committed or one is in the process of being committed, a criminal offence, or you have a warrant issued by a court or a judicial officer, a justice of peace,”{{more}} said Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves on Monday as he responded to a question from a journalist at Cabinet Room.

Gonsalves said that while most persons are usually accommodating if a police officer asks to enter their premises for certain reasons, a citizen has the right to ask that officer to leave if they are going above what they had initially said that they intended to do

“There are certain intrusions that are allowed by law, but if policemen, because he have on a uniform or plainclothes, show you ID or not, if he had no right to be there, he is trespasser, simple and straightforward like that”, said the Prime Minister, adding, “most people allow them and give them permission (to enter) and if it turns out more than what they represented to you, you can tell them to leave”.(LC)