Citizen’s arrest

My husband foiled a theft at the Saatchi Gallery – and was rewarded with a night in the cells

Back in October, in the same week that David Cameron was trying to persuade his party conference of the merits of the Big Society, my husband Anthony did what the Prime Minister urged and tried to help someone in need. As a result, he spent a night behind bars.

Here’s what happened. We were guests at the glitzy preview night of a new art charity show called The Art of Giving at the Saatchi Gallery on King’s Road in London. Towards the close of the evening, amid the hubbub and the plying of prosecco, a drama started. One of the event’s curators had left her laptop and phone lying around, and somebody had stolen them. She screamed for help. Anthony was standing nearby. He told her he would run for security.

Clattering down the stairs, he passed a man with a bulging jacket and a furtive look. Anthony noticed a laptop poking out of his jacket and a mobile phone in his hand. My husband, rather bravely I think, intervened. ‘I don’t think that’s yours, is it?’ he said. ‘Um, well, er,’ stammered the man. ‘Shall I take those back?’ Anthony went on. Gently but firmly, he retrieved the stolen goods from the thief and led him by the elbow to one of the front-desk security guards. It seemed a classic — and surprisingly peaceful — citizen’s arrest.

This should have been the end of the story: husband thanked and praised by grateful security staff, managers of gallery, and victim of crime. Instead, the victim, seeing Anthony holding her stolen goods, failed to recognise him as the man who had rushed to help her. Still hysterical, she pointed an accusing finger at him. The real criminal, sensing an opportunity, joined in. ‘Yes, he did it!’ he exclaimed, turning on Anthony. The security staff arrested my husband. Nobody asked why Anthony had approached the guards with the stolen goods.

The police were called and arrived to find my husband and thief locked up together with guards in the gallery basement. An initially promising chat with one of the officers — he assured us ‘off the record’ that he could see that this was all a mix-up — ended in disappointment. ‘My hands are tied,’ he decided after some discussion. I overheard one officer telling another: ‘Posh guy says that he was the one that stopped the little bloke from getting away, and the little bloke says that he’s just an innocent bystander.’ This didn’t bode well. A friend offered a witness statement to confirm that Anthony was indeed the man who ran for help when the alarm was raised, but the police weren’t satisfied. ‘Well, the witness is a friend of your husband, isn’t he?’ said one officer. For them it was Posh Guy v. Little Bloke, one man’s word against the other. Both men had to be handcuffed and taken into custody.

At the police station, no qualified person was available to take statements so both men had to be detained. The duty sergeant had the option to let Anthony go and come back in the morning, but he insisted that both men must be treated the same and, because nobody trusted the thief to return (he had no ID on him), my husband paid for the other man’s obvious duplicity and was locked up, all his personal effects taken away. He was allowed to keep his wedding ring on, as long as he signed a promise not to harm himself with it. He was not even allowed to call a solicitor — only when the time came to give his statement would this right be granted.

The endless night wore on. At the front of the station, I tried different approaches: the dogged questioner armed with husband’s passport, the dignified wife who appreciates that the police are just doing their job, with occasional forays into bewildered howling at the moon. At five in the morning, I was gently but firmly sent home, with more unhelpful platitudes — ‘I can see where you’re coming from, but…’ and ‘If it were up to me…’ — ringing in my ears.

Locked away, my husband reflected on the night’s events. Given what had happened, would he step forward to help someone like this again? He concluded sadly that he probably would not: trying to be a hero just wasn’t worth it. He described it to me later as a ‘very long night of the soul’.

Meanwhile, in the cell next door, the thief set off the fire alarm with a cigarette.

Finally, the police discovered that the thief, who had given a false name, had ‘previous’ and was on release from prison so, on balance, maybe he was the perpetrator. My husband emerged from his incarceration at dawn and was home in time for breakfast with our bemused children.

So far, so middle-class tragedy: worse things happen. Nobody was hurt, and there was no lasting miscarriage of justice: just a traumatised west London couple. Somewhere in the mix, however, it was forgotten that Anthony was not only innocent but had actually stopped a theft.

Six weeks on, the other players in this bizarre event have remained silent. If your laptop and phone were returned minutes after they were stolen, would you not feel some gratitude towards your saviour? The victim has made no attempt to contact us.

You also might think that the gallery management might want to thank the man who saved the day, or at least apologise for having wrongly apprehended him. But so far we have heard nothing.

The thief will go back to prison, we are told. My husband is assured that the arrest will not go on his record. Nobody died. But for me, the lack of common sense and general indecency exhibited throughout the ordeal is proof that the idea of a Big Society, in which citizens look after each other, is a hopeless fantasy. Stand up and do the right thing in modern Britain and you’ll get slapped down and banged up.