Posse comitatus refers to the common law authority wielded by the county sheriff to conscript any able-bodied male eighteen or older to assist him in keeping the peace or to pursue and arrest a felon; compare hue and cry. It is the law enforcement equivalent of summoning the militia for military purposes.

Etymology

The term derives from the Latin posse comitatus, "power (force) of the county",^[1] but legally means a sort of local militia.

English Civil War

In 1642, during the early stages of the English Civil War, local forces were everywhere employed by whichever side could, by producing valid written authority, induce them to assemble. The two most common authorities used were, on the side of the Parliament, its own recent "Militia Ordinance"; or that of the king, the old-fashioned "Commissions of Array". But the Royalist leader in Cornwall, Sir Ralph Hopton, indicted the enemy before the grand jury of the county as disturbers of the peace, and had the posse comitatus called out to expel them.

United States

The power presumably continues to exist in those U.S. states that have not repealed it by statute, however. Resort to the posse comitatus figures often in the plots of Western movies, where the body of men recruited is frequently referred to as a posse. Based on this usage, the word posse has come to be used colloquially to refer to various teams, cliques, or gangs. In a number of states, especially in the western United States, sheriffs and other law enforcement agencies have called their civilian auxiliary groups "posses." The Lattimer Massacre of 1897 illustrated the danger of such groups, and thus ended their use in situations of civil unrest.

In the United States, a Federal statute known as the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of the military of the United States as a posse comitatus or for law enforcement purposes.

The practical disuse of the posse comitatus, and its continued twilight existence as a theoretical legal power, is, like the militia, a subject for the debates about the meaning of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

See also

• Commandeering
• Vigilante

References

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