Legal Question in Criminal Law in Colorado

Re: Detaining minor child

Your question calls for a lot of mind reading. If by "you," you mean a person who is not employed in law enforcement; if by "detain" you mean physically restrain; if by "you think," you mean you don't know for sure; and if by "something wrong" you mean you're not absolutely certain there has been a crime committed, the short answer is, "Keep your hands off the kid."

A person who is not a peace officer may arrest another person when any crime has been, or is being, committed in the presence of the person making the arrest. That means if you didn't see the kid commit or committing the crime right in front of you, you can't legally arrest him or her.

If you are seeing, or did see, the kid commit the crime, you can use reasonable and appropriate physical force when and to the extent that you believe it to be reasonably necessary to make the arrest.

In my view, any kind of force that brings any kind of physical harm to a child would go beyond reasonable, unless necessary to prevent serious harm to someone else.

And remember, if you are wrong about what the child has done being criminal, you will yourself be subject to a criminal charge and civil lawsuit for false imprisonment.

Good luck.