Thousands gathered outside the State Capitol to protest police brutality and racial injustice as lawmakers met for the 2020 legislative session on June 19, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
A repeal of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law that still allows people to detain suspected criminals in self-defense scenarios advanced in the state House of Representatives on Thursday.
Legislation repealing the slavery-era citizen’s arrest law comes after the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man gunned down near Brunswick last year by two white men who suspected him of burglary and tried to undertake a citizen’s arrest.
Sponsored by Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, the bill has broad support from advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the NAACP, as well as state Democratic leaders.
“We do not want private citizens, untrained, playing police officer,” Reeves said at a House Judiciary (Civil) Committee hearing on Thursday.
The committee passed his bill unanimously and sent it to the full House.
Reeves’ bill would scrap a state law in effect since 1863 that lets private citizens arrest someone who commits a crime in their presence or during an escape attempt, while still permitting off-duty police officers and business owners to detain those believed to have committed a crime on their property.
The changes would not affect Georgia’s self-defense and stand-your-ground laws, which require different legal standards for people to use reasonable force to protect themselves than the broad leeway to detain under the current citizen’s arrest law, Reeves said.
Criminal-justice advocates turned out Thursday to voice support for the bill. The president of the NAACP’s Georgia chapter, Rev. James Woodall, called it “very necessary legislation” that will right longstanding wrongs in Georgia law.
“Ultimately, we think this is a good bill,” Woodall said. “We think it’s good policy and we think it will save lives all across Georgia.”
Marissa Dodson, public policy director for the nonprofit Southern Center for Human Rights, said the bill would end vigilante justice often committed with racist motives that has been allowed to exist in Georgia since during the Civil War.
“We don’t want people to step into the shoes of officers in law enforcement,” Dodson said. “We want people instead to call upon them when it’s necessary.”
Repealing citizen’s arrest is set to be the biggest legislative win this year for Georgia Democrats who have also pressed for clamping down on officer use-of-force tactics, training and accountability after last summer’s nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice.
Gov. Brian Kemp and state lawmakers detailed proposed changes to Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law on Feb. 16, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – State officials unveiled details of a bipartisan bill Tuesday aimed at revising Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law to limit who can detain someone suspected of a crime.
The first major criminal-justice measure proposed in the 2021 legislative session, sponsored by Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, would repeal a current Georgia law that broadly allows private citizens to detain someone who commits a crime in their presence or during an escape attempt.
It would still allow owners and employees in businesses including restaurants, as well as security guards and out-of-jurisdiction police officers, to detain those believed to have committed a crime on their property – so long as they’re handed over to local authorities within an hour.
The proposed changes would not affect the state’s stand-your-ground law or any other legal protections for Georgians who seek to reasonably defend themselves from crimes committed against themselves or others, officials stressed at a news conference Tuesday.
“Our bill to overhaul the citizen’s arrest statute is a balanced approach to protecting the lives and livelihoods of ourselves, our friends [and] our neighbors, while also preventing rogue vigilante-ism from threatening the security and God-given potential of all Georgians,” said Gov. Brian Kemp.
Kemp, joined by more than a dozen top state lawmakers from both parties, called the state’s current Civil War-era citizen’s arrest law “an antiquated law that is ripe for abuse.”
He said the bill stems from the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was jogging in a neighborhood outside Brunswick on Feb. 23, 2020, when two white men who suspected him of robbing a nearby home under construction shot him dead while trying to detain him.
The two men, Travis and Gregory McMichael, were arrested months later after protests over police brutality and racial injustice swept across the country and drew attention to the lack of action in the case by coastal Georgia authorities. They have pleaded not guilty, citing the citizen’s arrest law.
Anger over Arbery’s death and protests over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota on May 25, 2020, convinced a bipartisan slate of Georgia lawmakers last June to pass legislation outlawing hate crimes in the state. The citizen’s arrest bill follows up on that measure, Kemp said.
“Like the anti-hate crimes legislation, reforming Georgia’s citizen’s arrest statute is first and foremost about who we are as a state,” Kemp said Tuesday. “In Georgia, we value lives … regardless of race, creed or culture.”
The bill comes as Democratic lawmakers push a wide-ranging package of criminal-justice reform proposals including bans on certain police tactics like no-knock warrants and chokeholds, citizen-led oversight of inquiries into officer-involved shootings and stronger standards for use-of-force training.
Republican lawmakers have taken a less-expansive approach to criminal justice this session, so far filing bills to ease employment challenges for people on probation and carrying out Kemp’s priority to crack down harder on human trafficking.
So far, Reeves’ measure on citizen’s arrests faces the best odds for passing in the Republican-controlled General Assembly, despite wariness by some Democratic leaders to accept the proposed legal protections for business owners to detain suspected criminals.
Rep. Calvin Smyre, D-Columbus, who is the legislature’s longest-serving member, sought to quell concerns from within his party Tuesday by assuring the bill has backing from criminal-justice advocates and has elicited “excitement” from Arbery’s family.
“I think we’re on pretty good footing,” Smyre said after the news conference. “We assured the [Arbery] family and those in Brunswick that citizen’s arrest would be our next move. … It would have been an abdication of our responsibility if we had not touched citizen’s arrest early on in this legislative session.”
The bill also has support from James Woodall, the president of Georgia’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, saying he “fully endorses” Reeves’ measure.
“We urge members of both parties and in both chambers to do the same,” Woodall said.
Thousands gathered outside the State Capitol to protest police brutality and racial injustice as lawmakers met for the 2020 legislative session on June 19, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
State lawmakers are working this year on legislation to change Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law, ban no-knock arrest warrants and lower employment barriers for residents on probation.
But five weeks into the 2021 legislative session, reforming the citizen’s arrest statute appears the most likely criminal justice reform to gain passage.
Their bills range from straight-forward changes such as more training for officers in de-escalation techniques and a ban on using choke holds during arrests, to more complicated overhauls including a citizen-led review board for officer-involved shootings and outlawing private prisons.
Democrats are aiming to build on momentum after state lawmakers passed a bill last summer to boost penalties for hate crimes in Georgia. That bill was nearly tripped up as Republicans sought specific protections for police officers against hate crimes that ended up passing in separate legislation.
With chances slim the bulk of this year’s bills can move in the Republican-controlled state legislature, House Minority Leader James Beverly, D-Macon, said Democrats’ package at least keeps the focus on criminal-justice issues after last summer’s protests over police violence and racial injustice.
“We need to look at criminal justice as a whole and not just one or two things,” Beverly said. “It seems to me that there’s an appetite in Georgia to ask, ‘Are we really doing the right thing?’”
Revisions to the state’s citizen’s arrest law look most likely to gain passage in the General Assembly, Beverly said. The measure stems from the shooting death last year of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man killed near Brunswick in a confrontation with two white men who tried to detain him while he was jogging.
Proposals for changing the citizen’s arrest law have drawn “potential bipartisan support” so far, Beverly said. Whether Democrats back a bill soon to be sponsored by state Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, will depend on what degree Georgia citizens could still detain criminal suspects in certain situations.
Reeves, who is one of Gov. Brian Kemp’s floor leaders in the House, declined to comment on his upcoming bill but said details would be announced Feb. 16.
Democrats are also pushing Kemp and Republican lawmakers to join them in backing legislation to ban no-knock warrants, a controversial police tactic that was involved in the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman from Louisville, Ky., who was killed in an apartment raid last year.
Passing a ban on no-knock warrants would mark a win for criminal-justice reform advocates, Beverly said. It would also help bolster relations between both parties in the General Assembly as tensions rise over Republican efforts to overhaul Georgia’s absentee voting system that Democrats oppose.
“If you want to do something where you can really get buy-in from my caucus, it would be the no-knock warrant [ban],” Beverly said. “We have members on both sides who agree that those two issues [no-knock warrants and citizen’s arrests] are bad.”
But scrapping no-knock warrants may be a step too far for public safety-minded Republicans concerned about changing laws based on passionate reaction to high-profile deaths like those of Arbery, Taylor and George Floyd in Minnesota last year.
State Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, a retired major with the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office, said he was not involved in any no-knock warrants while serving four years on a multi-agency drug task force. Lawmakers should instead continue evaluating the tactic in the recently created Senate Study Committee on Law Enforcement Reform, he said.
“Jumping to conclusions is the worst thing that anybody can do when they feel a crime is committed,” Robertson said Friday. “We are either choosing to ignore logic … or we’re just doing things to say we’re doing them.”
Rather than outlawing certain individual actions, state lawmakers should place more focus on measures to improve de-escalation and other training standards for Georgia police officers that would include routine mental and physical health evaluations, Robertson said.
He noted officers currently receive just 20 hours of touch-up training each year after graduating from the police academy, falling short of the safeguards local agencies need to keep close tabs on officers before crisis situations like improper use-of-force ever happen.
“De-escalation is not a class: It is a thread that runs through every aspect of training,” Robertson said. “Every agency should have a fit-for-duty policy that covers mental and physical fitness.”
Robertson is among several Republican lawmakers to introduce criminal justice-focused legislation this year, though none is as expansive as Democrats’ legislative package. His measure would bar licensing boards from denying business licenses to Georgians on parole or probation for most felony convictions.
Robertson’s bill and another by state Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, aimed at tightening rules to end or shorten probation terms mark legislation that could help cut down Georgia’s status as the state with the highest rate of residents on probation, said Lisa McGahan, policy director for the nonprofit Georgia Justice Project.
“We have too many people serving under community supervision,” McGahan said. “You can’t access economic opportunity with that handicap.”
Other Republican-sponsored bills McGahan singled out include a measure by state Rep. Mandi Ballinger, R-Canton, to raise the age for youth offenders to be tried in adult court from 17 to 18, as well as two bills protecting human-trafficking victims that passed the state Senate on Thursday.
Terry Norris, executive director, Georgia Sheriffs’ Association
ATLANTA – Any proposals to do away with Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law should distinguish between an arrest made by a civilian and a citizen’s right to detain a criminal suspect, the head of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association said Thursday.
“We don’t need [citizens] to do the job for us,” Terry Norris told members of a legislative committee holding hearings on whether to reform or repeal the state’s citizen’s arrest law. “But they are the eyes and ears of every law enforcement officer.”
The General Assembly passed a hate-crimes bill late last month, and Gov. Brian Kemp signed it three days later.
But with time running out on the 2020 legislative session, lawmakers did not take up other criminal justice reform measures introduced after the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man gunned down while jogging near Brunswick. Three white men, including a father and son, have been charged with murder.
The House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee opened hearings last week into one of those subsequent proposals, legislation to repeal Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law.
Georgia Rep. Carl Gilliard, D-Garden City, called the Arbery case a “citizen’s arrest gone wrong.”
“The eyes of the nation are on Georgia,” Gilliard told the committee Thursday during its second hearing on the citizen’s arrest issue. “What we have here is an opportunity to send a message to the world that Georgia has no tolerance for people taking the law into their own hands and taking lives.”
“The criminal legal system in Georgia does not rely on private citizens having police powers,” added Mazie Lynn Causey, a lobbyist for the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “[Citizen’s arrests] allow due process to be jettisoned in order to let private citizens assume the role of enforcer, prosecutor and judge.”
The idea of reforming or repealing the citizen’s arrest law drew support Thursday from Georgia’s law enforcement community.
Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, said he never came across an incident involving a citizen’s arrest in 32 years as a prosecutor.
“I don’t think prosecutors would object to repealing it,” he said.
Norris, executive director of the sheriffs’ association, said he doesn’t believe the law enforcement community and the bill’s supporters are far apart on how to approach the citizen’s arrest law.
But he said citizens must retain the right to detain someone they see committing a crime in order to protect lives and property.
Norris said any citizen who detains a suspect must notify law enforcement authorities immediately and must not be allowed to transport a suspect.
Skandalakis and Causey agreed that situations involving a suspect trying to rob a retail store or break into a citizen’s home or car are covered in other sections of the state’s legal code and have nothing to do with the citizen’s arrest law.
But committee Vice Chairman Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, said he’d like the committee to consider legislation that would clarify the rights of shopkeepers and homeowners to detain a criminal suspect.
“Every major retail store out there has so much invested in their loss-prevention program … in dealing with retail shoplifters,” he said.
Reeves said clarifying the right to detain a suspect would make it a matter of state law rather than leaving it to the subjective judgment of a prosecutor.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law has a history of racism and encourages civilians lacking law enforcement training to take the law into their own hands, civil- and human-rights advocates said Monday.
“Law enforcement has resources to handle these kinds of things,” Christopher Bruce, political director for the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told members of a legislative committee. “We should encourage citizens to look to law enforcement.”
The Georgia House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee took the first step with Monday’s hearing toward fulfilling House Speaker David Ralston’s pledge to follow up on the General Assembly’s recent passage of a hate-crimes law by considering additional criminal justice reforms.
The state’s citizen’s arrest law became a focus of attention following the fatal shooting earlier this year of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man gunned down while jogging near Brunswick. Two white men, a father and son, charged with murder in the case have claimed they were trying to make a citizen’s arrest because they suspected Arbery had committed a burglary.
The law was put on the books in Georgia during the Civil War, a time when white slaveholders were trying to prevent runaway slaves from joining the Union Army, said the Rev. James Woodall, president of the NAACP’s Georgia chapter.
“This law was literally written to keep Negroes as slaves,” he said.
After the war, vigilante mobs used the law to justify the lynching of blacks, Woodall said.
Both the ACLU and NAACP are recommending that the General Assembly repeal citizen’s arrest as an outdated law that is no longer necessary in an era when law enforcement agencies have sufficient resources to handle criminal complaints.
But some of the committee’s Republican members questioned whether doing away with the citizen’s arrest law would leave Georgians unprotected from home invasions or shopkeepers with no recourse to detain shoplifters.
Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, said a police officer can’t always be present.
“Can I detain somebody not authorized to be in my home or car?” he asked.
Marissa McCall Dodson, public policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights, said the citizen’s arrest law could be repealed while maintaining the ability of shopkeepers to detain shoplifting suspects. Homeowners would still be protected by the legal right to self-defense, she said.
“Citizen’s arrest and self-defense are not the same,” she said.
Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter, who also testified Monday, said the cases of citizen’s arrests he has encountered in his decades as a prosecutor typically don’t go well because civilians attempting to make citizen’s arrests lack legal training.
“I’m personally not in favor of citizens arresting one another,” Porter said. “They usually turn out badly with someone’s misinterpretation of the law.”
However, Porter urged lawmakers to consider the potential consequences of abolishing homeowners’ ability to make a citizen’s arrest during a home invasion, leaving them with only the legal protection of self-defense.
“You incentivize a homeowner to kill someone rather than detain them under the citizen’s arrest law,” he said.
