If cops cop out, should you step in?

Imagine all the people…

If you were in the following scene, whose part would you play?

Two people were brave enough to tackle this thief, who was apparently unarmed and didn't use excessive force in shaking off those customers, ultimately getting away.

Imagine if all those in the store at the time had linked arms at the exit and barred him from passing.

Imagine if several of them had pinned down the thief and made a citizen's arrest.

Unfortunately, it takes a lot of imagination.

What's that weapon for?

Now try this: Imagine you have a concealed-carry permit and you see the shoplifter running away with his loot. Do you:

a) Fire a warning shot?

b) Fire at his legs if he runs toward you (or at the tires of his car as he speeds away)?

c) Wave the gun around in the air and hope he notices and gets intimidated?

d) Call the cops and keep the pistol in your holster?

Back in 2015 this was a real-life question for a 48-year-old Michigan woman who fired several shots at a car in which two shoplifters were speeding away with over $1,000 dollars' worth of merchandise. The thieves still managed to escape (although one of the car's tires may have been punctured by a bullet) but the woman didn't escape castigation for firing her weapon even though it was in a non-life-threatening situation. She was not, however, prosecuted.

When the cops cop out

Several of those condemning the shooter justified their point of view by explaining that shoplifting is “only” a misdemeanor and that she could have, accidentally, injured bystanders when discharging her weapon. While danger to innocents is a valid concern, in general, it appears that bystanders are motivated to remain bystanders and not take an active citizen's role in preserving the social order due to fear for themselves, not for others.

After all, “we the people” have effectively delegated policing powers to the police, and they have accepted upon themselves the duty to face danger, while using the power of the government, instead of us.

But what happens when they don't? When they “cop out,” so to speak? 

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, says step in:

Policing minister wants a nation of police

In the UK, the Policing Minister, Chris Phelp, recently made headlines when he called for more people to make use of citizen's arrest to curb surging shoplifting crime. 

The wider public do have the power of citizen’s arrest and, where it’s safe to do so, I would encourage that to be used because if you do just let people walk in, take stuff and walk out without proper challenge, including potentially a physical challenge, then again it will just escalate. While I want the faster and better police response, the police can’t be everywhere all the time.

Among those criticizing him for his words was a director of a private security firm, Triton Security, who said that the general public should not enter a potentially dangerous situation but should instead rely on police and trained professionals to respond to crime, especially as the recent trend involves not only more crime in general but also more violent crime.

A throwback to worse or better times?

In the United States, citizen's arrest is legal in virtually every state. In Kentucky, it used to be obligatory for a citizen witnessing a felony in process to take “affirmative” steps to prevent it, if possible, but this is no longer the case.

In most states, a person must actually see the crime being committed in order to lawfully detain the perpetrator; in some states, a “reasonable” assumption is sufficient. Laws vary from state to state on what happens if the person arrested is ultimately acquitted. In some states, the person who made the citizen's arrest will face no penalty for his mistaken assumption, as long as it was a reasonable assumption to make; in others, such a citizen can be sued for false arrest and/or imprisonment.

In Georgia, a citizen's arrest jumped into the headlines following the Ahmaud Arbery case, when three men chasing Arbery were attempting a citizen's arrest. Arbery struggles with one of the men, attempting to grab his shotgun and throwing punches. Following the case, Georgia repealed its citizen's arrest law, the (Republican) governor, Brian Kemp, saying at the time that,

This bill makes Georgia the first state in the country to repeal its citizen's arrest statute. Today we are replacing a Civil War-era law, ripe for abuse, with language that balances the sacred right to self-defense of a person and property with our shared responsibility to root out injustice and set our state on a better path forward … we continue to send a clear message that the Peach State will not tolerate sinister acts of vigilantism in our communities.

Recruiting: Snitch officers

Kemp, in describing the law as “Civil War-era,” presented it as something archaic, and some believe that the law originated with the desire of slave-owners to arrest runaway slaves. This is a mischaracterization of a law that dates back hundreds of years to English case law, based in turn on the prevailing concept that all citizens share the duties of maintaining law and order.

Today's governments are generally more hostile to the notion that powers delegated to the police may also be wielded by the man-on-the-street. Unless, that is, the average Joe or Jane can be co-opted for a very different type of crime: snitching.

Toward the beginning of the COVID panic, reporting on one's fellow citizen breaking lockdown regulations spiraled up to the point that some police departments started to ask people to stop reporting these new “crimes," as they couldn't cope with the deluge encouraged by people such as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti:

You know the old expression about snitches, well in this case, snitches get rewards. We want to thank you for turning folks in and making sure we are all safe.

Across the Atlantic, as the UK government locked down the country for the first time during the COVID panic, over half of the country's police forces introduced new online forms to enable and encourage the public to report anyone breaking the rules. Within weeks, almost 200,000 people had become snitches.

Freeing the police?

While citizens' arrests may have once supplemented law enforcement, an actual movement to have citizens risk bodily injury to arrest shoplifters and other thieves could theoretically lead to more police removed from positions investigating and preventing theft and moved to enforce possession crimes or hate speech crimes for opposing various government policies online (which requires a good bit of an officer's time scouring social media for “problematic” posts). 

In such a case, citizens would not be supplementing police activities but replacing them, without any guarantee that there will be no risk to the customer.