When videos began emerging online showing Didulo's followers at the city's police station purporting to want to arrest officers inside, things predictably escalated into a violent encounter and multiple arrests, but not of any police officers. The Qanon conspiracy-minded group attempted to turn the tables on officers showing up for their shifts, telling them they were under arrest. Obviously, the group found themselves out-muscled by members of the Peterborough Police, and three people ended up in jail cells when all was said and done. The event also prompted the city's mayor, Diane Therrien, to post a hilariously profane Tweet telling Didulo and her followers to “fuck off, fuckwads.”

Though it may be easy to brush her and her followers off as a bunch of tragic ignoramuses, the recent events in Peterborough at the city's police station certainly raise some interesting questions around the rights of private citizens to make arrests. Can you arrest a cop in Canada? What are the rules around making a citizen's arrest? What are the consequences of trying to arrest a member of law enforcement by a private citizen?

Canada does indeed allow people to make citizen arrests, but unsurprisingly there's little to no official information about the specific circumstances of an attempted citizen's arrest of an on-duty member of law enforcement. According to the federal government, people should think twice about making a citizen's arrest due to the potential for violence. Instead, people are urged to go to the police and report any wrongdoing rather than stepping in and trying to arrest a criminal suspect on their own. With no police training, private citizens are ill-equipped to conduct arrests since they lack “proper intervention tools.”

Though the Canadian government strongly advises people to leave police work to police officers, it urges people to “carefully” consider how risky making a citizen's arrest actually is, warning of grave “unintended consequences” that could result. Since arrests involve physical contact with another person and detaining them, making an unlawful arrest could most certainly end up with you charged with assault and other offences under the Criminal Code of Canada. Making an unlawful citizen's arrest could no doubt be a violation of a person's Constitutional rights against unlawful detention as guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

With that in mind, the Canadian government urges people to heavily question the idea of making a citizen's arrest. Firstly, people should consider whether it's truly necessary for them to step in and take action and determine whether it's “feasible” for the arrest to be made by a police officer. If so, they should just report the crime to the police and leave the arrest to trained members of law enforcement. Secondly, people should consider if making a citizen's arrest could endanger their personal safety or that of others, especially if the person they intend to arrest is carrying a weapon of some kind. Thirdly, people should ask themselves if they can feasibly hand the suspect into police custody “without delay,” in order to ensure they haven't violated the individual's Charter rights. Lastly, people should wonder whether they have a “reasonable belief” that the person they're arresting has committed a crime.

For Didulo's followers in Peterborough, these questions likely didn't cross their minds since they showed up to arrest police officers themselves. But had they actually tried to make a lawful citizen's arrest, they'd have to take a series of steps to make sure it was by the book. People who undertake a citizen's arrest under Canadian law are compelled to inform the suspect that they're making a citizen's arrest and intend to turn them into police upon their arrival.

You also must “ask explicitly” for the suspect to cooperate until officers arrive, while also avoiding the use of physical force “if at all possible.” People making citizen arrests are not supposed to search the person they've detained and are only supposed to “temporarily” hold them until a real police officer can take custody. When law enforcement does show up to collect the suspect, the person who makes the citizen's arrest is required to lay out the “plain facts” surrounding the person's detention.

Canada's Citizen's Arrest and Self-defence Act was an amendment to the Criminal Code that came into force in 2013. It altered an earlier law that only allowed people to make citizen arrests if they caught a person red-handed committing a crime. The Act allows people to make arrests in a “reasonable” amount of time after the crime is committed. But there are still limited circumstances in which it's lawful to arrest someone as a regular citizen.

For example, if you see someone being chased by police officers and you stop them, it's legal to make a citizen's arrest. However, if they've committed a serious indictable offence, such as a crime of violence, you must actually witness them in the act. In addition, you have to immediately arrest a person who allegedly committed the crime, unless it happens on your own property. The law states that only people who own the property or are in “lawful possession” of the property can make a citizen's arrest, but they can also authorize someone to make the arrest if necessary.

So, for example, if you find someone breaking into your house and you tackle and detain them before calling the police, that would be a lawful citizen's arrest under the Act as long as the use of force isn't unreasonable. Otherwise, if you're found to have used excessive force during the arrest, you yourself could face criminal charges and even civil lawsuits if you're found to have unduly injured a criminal suspect. Moreover, if you don't immediately call the police and tell them you have someone in custody ready for them to take to jail, your actions could be deemed illegal which could also lead to “civil and criminal consequences.

But even though it's legal under Canadian law to make citizen arrests under specific circumstances, the federal government warns people that it's a risky and undoubtedly dangerous thing to do. Since regular people aren't trained to apprehend people like police officers are, the government urges people to use “extreme caution” should they try to make a citizen's arrest.

For the unfortunate folks in Peterborough who showed up at the city's police station, it's obvious that they didn't heed the government's warning about the dangers of a citizen's arrest. Even if they somehow managed to be successful, they would have been in violation of the Act and would've had nowhere to bring the suspect, nor anyone to hand them over to, since they were trying to arrest the cops themselves. But it's probably reasonable to assume that these people have no actual knowledge of Canadian law, since they're loyal to a random woman from the internet who claimed that aliens were on their way to help them during the melee at the police station. That didn't happen of course, and now their only hope is finding a good criminal defence lawyer who will have the unenviable task of explaining their clients' bizarre and dangerous actions to a judge.

Alistair Vigier is the manager of ClearWay Law, a website that connects the public to lawyers. People also have the ability to leave ratings for every lawyer in Canada.