IANAL but as I understand it, the circumstances under which a 'private citizen' is permitted to arrest people are more restrictive than the circumstances under which a police officer is allowed to arrest people. Namely that a 'private citizen' is only allowed to arrest people for crimes that are committed in the presence of the person performing the arrest, whereas police are allowed to arrest people for crimes that were not committed in their presence.
(Police officers are (almost?) always citizens, despite that term sometimes being used in a way that excludes police)
In most states, citizens arrest is allowed, but in much more limited circumstances, much stricter limits on use of force to effect an arrest, and with much more civil and criminal liability risk then arrest by police.
A fairly typical rule is that citizens arrest is only for felonies that occur either in your presence or with a certain degree of justified belief but also that the arrested person must be factually guilty of the felony. (Some states also allow it for some misdemeanors, but are even more restrictive there.)
California Penal Code Section 835a provides specific authorization for force and protections from liability for circumstances which exceed the normal bounds of self-defense in peace officer arrests, and Section 834a creates a legal duty of the person being arrested by a peace officer not to resist.
There is a similar but not identical protection to 835a for non-peace officer public employee arrests in Section 836.5(a)
Neither protection applied to peace officer arrests has a parallel protection for citizens arrests.
In the US, you can make a citizen's arrest if you are in the presence of a crime being committed (or if a felony was committed not in the citizen's presence), but you can't use too much force (varies by state). Also, if you're wrong, you can face charges. For example, if you lock someone in a room to arrest them while the police are coming, and the person wasn't doing anything wrong, you could face wrongful imprisonment charges.
There is a controversy right now in California that the bar for police to use deadly force is too low - currently the police officer needs to claim fear in a situation to justify use of deadly force.
http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article207741689.html
There was a Supreme Court case recently that gives law enforcement a pretty wide latitude to justify deadly force - the police officer in this case disobeyed a superior's order and also was not trained in the situation for which he decided to shoot.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-supreme-court-police-sho...
Again: that has nothing to do with effecting arrest. I realize that sworn officers have legal protections regarding their actions to protect others, including the use of deadly force.
Can you show me where they have wider latitude to use force to effect an arrest?
The US operates on common law, so much of it is a matter of precedence now simply what's written down. And their are many cases of police but not private citizens being given deference on the use of force.
But this person claimed that the amount of permissible force varied by state, as if different state statutes allowed for different amounts of force from police vs other citizens, and I don't think that's so. Or at least, I've never seen it.
Some states give police specific latitude in using deadly force to protect others, but not merely to effect an arrest (again, at least that I know of).
Also, it's important to note that to the degree these are common-law distinctions, common-law is much, much older than professional policing, which is fairly new in the western political experience. As it was emerging, of course, the western tradition came to base the professional police role largely on the Peelian principles, one of which is
> To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
...so if indeed the common-law tradition is that police are "members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen" then it's hard to understand how that's compatible with wildly different arrest powers.
The law get's really specific. For example there are plenty of laws relating to police chases which cause 300 and 400 deaths per year.
In 2007, the United States Supreme Court held in Scott v. Harris (550 U.S. 372) that a "police officer's attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not violate the Fourth Amendment, even when it places the fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury or death."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_chase
They are not necessarily 'authorized' by the letter of the law. But if they are not prosecuted to the same extent as citizens are, then they are authorized de facto.
I'm not being obtuse. I'm asking for documentation of a specific, unambiguous claim in the form of a link to a statute in a particular state which provides for different levels of lawful force in effecting an arrest for police in contrast to other citizens. Provide such a link and I'll acknowledge that I was incorrect.
That's probably a good thing, considering the wave of white people calling the police on black people for literally doing nothing but being black. The incidents currently occurring are terrible enough, but I can't imagine how awful it would be if those people felt they didn't need the cops, and carried out the arrests themselves.
That citizen's arrests are difficult to justify or do.
"And what exactly are you projecting will happen in this scenario?"
The racist white people who are calling the cops on black people for simply being around will then switch to trying to do "citizen's arrest" on them.
"Are you asserting that the addition of professional policing has meant less projecting of racial violence by the state?"
No, and I have no idea where you got that from. I'm saying that racists would be even more empowered to be shitty and make things worse than they already are.
> That citizen's arrests are difficult to justify or do.
They aren't, though. That's the whole point. It's just that they're rarely necessary.
> The racist white people who are calling the cops on black people for simply being around will then switch to trying to do "citizen's arrest" on them.
This seems like unfounded fear to me. If it were a real concern, why isn't it happening now? Conversely, since we do currently have a regime of professional police, why hasn't it proved insulatory against this phenomenon? The criminal justice system is at the core of racism in the USA; it certainly hasn't had the effect of inhibiting "racist white people". Instead, it has been the very mechanism by which racist outcomes are assured.
> I'm saying that racists would be even more empowered to be shitty and make things worse than they already are.
Just to be clear: you are saying that a criminal justice system with a smaller footprint will result in a situation in which "racists would be even more empowered"? That's what you're saying? Because that sounds completely backwards.
If that's true, that's as full-blown an abandonment of Peelian principles as I've ever heard.