“Sadly, if he’d pulled the same stunt in his native country, he’d probably have been arrested for assault and the mugger would be suing him for compensation...”
Very true. Over there native Brits now have to take off their pants for their new arrivals - at least if the new arrival-type wants that particular pair of pants.
...and they don’t mind, at all, since it is MUCH BETTER (to them) than the violent gun culture of America.
Don’t get me wrong, in theory he could have detained the criminal perfectly legally without breaking the law, but the law of ‘citizens arrest’ is so complicated and misunderstood that the average citizen would have done it illegally by failing to properly inform the suspect of his rights etc so in practice, the criminal would probably have said ‘but I hadn’t done nuffink’ and accused him of assaulting his innocent self, and because the police have had their discretionary powers of deciding whether or not to arrest eroded, they would have been forced to arrest him for assault.
Best thing to do under those circumstances (if it had happened in Britain) would have been to just fight the criminal off, let him get away and report him to the police in the hope that he would be arrested by them later...