DOVER – Yesterday the House passed two bills that aid in protecting Delawareans’ civil liberties and increasing safety.
Sponsored by Rep. Mara Gorman and Sen. Marie Pinkney, House Bill 153 and House Bill 142 both focus on arrest authority.
HB 153 puts a clear end to the outdated and dangerous practice of “citizen’s arrests” in Delaware by prohibiting anyone without explicit statutory authority from detaining or arresting another person.
In order to eliminate any doubt that a “citizen’s arrest” is not permitted in the First State, this bill deletes two outdated provisions of the Delaware Code that reference the exercise of arrest by private detectives. Private detectives do not hold the explicit statutory authority needed to make arrests.
Similarly, HB 142, a successor to HB 76, would prohibit unauthorized individuals from making arrests in Delaware for alleged felonies committed in other states.
“These bills take a critical step forward by recognizing that public safety is best served when arrests are made by trained professionals accountable to the law, not by untrained civilians acting on instinct, emotion, or prejudice,” said Rep. Mara Gorman.
“They do not prohibit someone from protecting themselves and others under Delaware’s self-defense laws or assisting law enforcement when asked to do so in an emergency. What they do is draw a clear and necessary line: chasing someone down, detaining them, or threatening violence in the name of a so-called citizen’s arrest is not acceptable and never was.”
Citizens’ arrests are an outdated and dangerous practice that only took place due to the lack of formal police officers in the early United States. Even then, only white men could make citizen’s arrests, and that power was often used to terrorize Black communities. Private citizens took it upon themselves to catch individuals who escaped from slavery during the Civil War era, and conducted lynchings without cause.
Emmett Till was victim of brutal and violent lynching in the 1950s. Despite no evidence of Till committing a crime, his assailants were deemed not guilty for his murder.
In February 2020, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was killed at the hands of private citizens while jogging in Georgia. The three men charged with the murder of Arbery claimed that they were attempting to make a citizen’s arrest, and cited Georgia’s 1863 Citizen’s Arrest Law in their defense.
Amongst the mens’ charges following the trial were attempted kidnapping, committing hate crimes, and murder.
The State of Georgia repealed their Civil War-era citizen’s arrest law in 2021. However, citizen’s arrests are still permitted in the state in limited circumstances.
“Citizen’s arrests undermine justice, due process, and the training of law enforcement officers,” said Sen. Marie Pinkney.
“Across the country, we’ve seen this dangerous and outdated practice used to escalate violence and justify racially motivated confrontation based on suspicion and bias rather than evidence and justice. By ensuring that citizens can’t take the law into their own hands, this bill is a meaningful step toward centering fairness, equality, and professionalism in all public safety measures.”
40 states still have citizen’s arrest laws in place. If HB 142 and HB 153 are signed into law, Delaware will become the first state to explicitly ban citizen’s arrests.
Both bills now head to the Senate for consideration.
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