{"id":602084,"date":"2026-09-16T11:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T11:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/602084\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T11:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T11:32:11","slug":"man-charged-with-assault-after-attempted-citizens-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/602084\/","title":{"rendered":"Man charged with assault after attempted citizen’s arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"

A young man has been charged with assault after a citizen’s arrest<\/a> in Hamilton allegedly went too far.<\/p>\n

Hamilton City Area Commander inspector Scott Miller told RNZ a 19-year-old was before the courts after incident involving a citizen’s arrest in Hamilton last week.<\/p>\n

He said officers were called to a commercial premises on Victoria St around 5.15pm on Saturday, following a report of shoplifting.<\/p>\n

Miller said when police got to the scene, they found one person suspected of being involved in the shoplifting had been detained.<\/p>\n

It was alleged the person who detained the suspected shoplifter assaulted them during the incident.<\/p>\n

A man had been charged with common assault and was next due to appear in the Hamilton District Court on Friday.<\/p>\n

The suspected shoplifter would also go through a youth justice process.<\/p>\n

Justice Minister: ‘They can hang on to somebody and call police’<\/p>\n

A new bill introduced to Parliament this month is looking to give the public greater powers to make a citizen’s arrest.\u00a0 (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith said he didn’t know the particulars of the case but that they passed a law and expected people to follow it.<\/p>\n

“The clear directions in that is if the situation is appropriate, people can hang on to somebody and then call the police and follow the instructions of the police.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got clear legislation in place and we expect people to follow it.”<\/p>\n

He said he stood by the policy, which was an extension of the existing citizen’s arrest powers.<\/p>\n

“Look, there’ll be a period of working our way through how that works in practice, but I’m not going to comment obviously on the individual case.”<\/p>\n

rnz.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A young man has been charged with assault after a citizen’s arrest in Hamilton allegedly went too far.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[51,67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-602084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-auckland","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}