Posse comitatus (common law)
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In common law, posse comitatus (Latin, "county force", meaning a sort of local militia) referred to the authority wielded by the county sheriff to conscript any able-bodied male age 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.
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[edit] 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.
[edit] United States
With modern methods of law enforcement, the posse comitatus is generally obsolete (with some notable exceptions - see, for example, the use of a Sherriff's Posse by Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona). The power presumably continues to exist in those U.S. states that have not repealed it by statute, however.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 U.S. Constitution Second Amendment.
[edit] Other use
Because of the relationship of a posse comitatus to an armed citizenry, in the U.S. a loose-knit anti-Semitic terrorist organization or group of organizations calls itself Posse Comitatus. They believe that Jews dominate the Federal government and control its fiat money, and refuse payment of taxes and debts for that reason; they file legal documents proclaiming independence from the United States, or claiming liens against Internal Revenue Service employees, judges, and other perceived enemies. They claim that the county sheriff is the supreme executive authority in the United States. The group has been involved in murder of United States Marshals and other serious crimes.
