posse comitatus
posse com·i·ta·tus
P5502850 (kŏm′ĭ-tā′təs)Posse Comitatus
the body of men over the age of fifteen which the sheriff of an English county could raise as a force in a crisis, 1285.| Noun | 1. | posse comitatus - a temporary police force |
| 单词 | posse comitatus | |||
| 释义 | posse comitatusposse com·i·ta·tusP5502850 (kŏm′ĭ-tā′təs)Posse Comitatusthe body of men over the age of fifteen which the sheriff of an English county could raise as a force in a crisis, 1285.
Posse ComitatusPosse ComitatusPosse Comitatus believes that all government should be rooted at the county, rather than the federal, level. Posse comitatus means “power of the county.” The original Posse Comitatus Act was passed by Congress in 1878 to prevent federal troops from enforcing community laws or from acting as police officers. In the days of the old West and the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, the army often became involved in what should have been traditional police actions. The Posse Comitatus law was passed to remove the army from civilian law enforcement and to return it to its role of defending the nation’s borders. In the 1970s retired army colonel William Potter Gale formed a group of armed anti-tax and anti-federal-government survivalists who agreed with his political philosophy that all government power should be rooted at the county, rather than the federal, level. Posse Comitatus members resist paying taxes because the federal government is controlled by Jews. Some members won’t even apply for driver’s licenses because to do so would be to submit to an illegal, subversive authority. The Posse soon attracted Klan members and other anti-Semites, including David Duke. This intermittently active, loosely organized group of antigovernment agitators and avowed followers of Christian Identity received nationwide attention in 1983 when Posse member Gordon Kahl murdered two federal marshals who had come to arrest him for a parole violation in connection with a conviction for nonpayment of taxes. Kahl became a fugitive and was later killed in a shootout with Arkansas law-enforcement officers. In October 1987 Posse founder William Potter Gale and four associates from the California-based Committee of the States were convicted of threatening the lives of Internal Revenue Service agents and a Nevada state judge. Sentenced to federal prison in January 1988, Gale died in April of that year, at age seventy-one. In 1991 an Identity minister and Posse leader based in Michigan, James Wickstrom, was convicted of scheming to distribute $100,000 in counterfeit bills to white supremacists at the 1988 Aryan World Congress. While he was doing time in prison, Wickstrom transferred his leadership position to Mark Thomas, an Identity preacher from Pennsylvania. Wickstrom was released from prison in 1994 and remains involved in the Posse movement by operating a website. August Kreis, who assumed leadership of Aryan Nations in 2005, still maintains a significant role in Posse Comitatus and believes that their group will bring the United States back under God’s laws. What the Posse Comitatus Believes
posse comitatusPosse Comitatus[Latin, Power of the county.] Referred at Common Law to all males over the age of fifteen on whom a sheriff could call for assistance in preventing any type of civil disorder. The notion of a posse comitatus has its roots in ancient English Law, growing out of a citizen's traditional duty to raise a "hue and cry" whenever a serious crime occurred in a village, thus rousing the fellow villagers to assist the sheriff in pursuing the culprit. By the seventeenth century, trained militia bands were expected to perform the duty of assisting the sheriff in such tasks, but all males age fifteen and older still had the duty to serve on the posse comitatus. In the United States, the posse comitatus was an important institution on the western frontier, where it became known as the posse. At various times vigilante committees, often acting without legal standing, organized posses to capture wrongdoers. Such posses sharply warned first-time cattle rustlers, for instance, and usually hanged or shot second-time offenders. In 1876 a four-hundred-man posse killed one member of the infamous Jesse James gang and captured two others. In 1878 the use of a posse comitatus was limited by the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. This act, passed in response to the use of federal troops to enforce reconstruction policies in the southern states, prohibited the use of the U.S. Army to enforce laws unless the Constitution or an act of Congress explicitly authorized such use. This act was amended five times in the 1980s, largely to allow for the use of military resources to combat trafficking in illicit narcotics. Though rarely used, the posse comitatus continues to be a modern legal institution. In June 1977, for example, the Aspen, Colorado, sheriff called out the posse comitatus—ordinary citizens with their own weapons—to hunt for escaped mass murderer Theodore ("Ted") Bundy. Many states have modern posse comitatus statutes; one typical example is the Kentucky statute enacted in 1962 that gives any sheriff the power to "command and take with him the power of the county or a part thereof, to aid him in the execution of the duties of his office" (Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 70.060 [Baldwin 1996]). "Posse Comitatus" is also the name taken by a right-wing, antitax extremist group founded in 1969 by Henry L. Beach, a retired dry cleaner and one-time member of the Silver Shirts, a Nazi-inspired organization that was established in the United States after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. The group operated on the belief that the true intent of the founders of the United States was to establish a Christian republic where the individual was sovereign. Members of the group were united by the belief that the federal government was illegitimate, being operated by Jewish interests through the Internal Revenue Service, the federal courts, and the federal reserve. The Posse Comitatus received widespread media attention in 1983 when a leader of the group, Gordon Kahl, was involved in a violent standoff with North Dakota law enforcement officers. Convicted for failure to pay taxes and then for violating the terms of his Probation, Kahl shot and killed three officers and wounded three others before being shot and killed himself. Further readingsCorcoran, James. 1990. Bitter Harvest. New York: Viking. Hasday, Jill Elaine. 1996. "Civil War as Paradigm: Reestablishing the Rule of Law at the End of the Cold War." Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy 5. Malcolm, Joyce Lee. 1994. To Keep and Bear Arms. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press. posse comitatus(pahs-see coh-mitt-tah-tus) n. from Latin for "possible force," the power of the sheriff to call upon any able-bodied adult men (and presumably women) in the county to assist him in apprehending a criminal. The assembled group is called a posse for short. posse comitatus‘the power of the county’. The sheriff was able to call together able-bodied men to keep the peace. The institution transplanted to the USA, thence into ordinary parlance: ‘round up a posse’.POSSE COMITATUS. These Latin words signify the power of the county. posse comitatus
Synonyms for posse comitatus
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