N.J. panel seeks end to citizen’s arrests over concerns about safety, civil rights

New Jersey laws allow shopkeepers, librarians, harbormasters, casino security officers, public transit workers, and just about anyone else to make a citizen’s arrest if they spot a scofflaw they think should be brought to justice.
But a commission tasked with ensuring the Garden State’s statutes remain relevant wants legislators to revoke the authority of most citizens to detain suspected lawbreakers.
The “anachronistic” statutes that allow citizen’s arrests don’t spell out how much suspicion is necessary to warrant action, how much force a citizen can use to detain someone, how long a suspect can be held, and what liability a citizen has if they wrongly apprehend someone, the New Jersey Law Revision Commission said in a new report.
Without that clarity, citizen’s arrests could result in civil rights violations and threaten the safety of both the arrestee and arrester, given that ordinary citizens lack the training and experience to detain someone, said Barbara Brosnan Rivera, the commission’s counsel.
“Over the years, as organized police forces have developed, the need for citizen’s arrest has decreased,” Rivera said Thursday during the commission’s monthly meeting.
People have misinterpreted or abused citizen’s arrest laws with fatal consequences, Rivera said. She pointed to the 2020 death of Ahmaud Arbery, a jogger who was killed in Georgia by three men who said they chased and killed him because they suspected he was a burglar. The men were eventually convicted of hate crimes and imprisoned, and lawmakers subsequently repealed Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law.
Most states have citizen’s arrest statutes, but some, including New York and South Carolina, are now considering amending them because of similar concerns, Rivera said.
The commission first identified New Jersey citizen’s arrest statutes as ripe for review early in the pandemic, when questions arose about whether citizens could arrest people who ignored Gov. Phil Murphy’s mask mandate and other social distancing rules, Rivera said. At that time, Murphy discouraged citizen’s arrests, saying anyone wanting to bring a mask flouter to account should alert police.
New Jersey laws on citizen’s arrests date back to the 1800s, with at least one remaining “virtually unchanged” for over a century, the commission’s report says.
They empower citizens to detain someone they see commit disorderly conduct offenses, which are minor transgressions such as lewdness, harassment, fighting, and cursing in a public place. The laws also authorize shopkeepers to hold suspected shoplifters and librarians to detain people they suspect of stealing books and other borrowable materials, Rivera said.
They further grant arrest authority to “special officers” who suspect wrongdoing, including harbormasters, people working for stud farms and agricultural fairs and exhibitions, constables, and those working to capture prison escapees and parole absconders.
The commission’s report recommends that legislators disempower citizens and librarians from making citizen’s arrests and more explicitly define the authority and responsibilities of shopkeepers who want to detain suspected thieves.
The report also urges lawmakers to revoke arrest authority from “special officers” and revoke that term from statutes because it “appears to be a vestige of a bygone era.” Lawmakers already abolished constables in a law Gov. Phil Murphy signed last year, Rivera added.
Commissioners, though, noted that some agencies still might use special officers and need detention authority, such as harbormasters who discover illicit cargo or missing permits and licenses on boats they inspect.
So the commissioners directed staff to seek guidance from law enforcement on whether any special officers still operate in New Jersey and which among them should retain arrest authority.
Commissioner Edward Hartnett, a professor at Seton Hall University’s law school, also predicted the report could receive “policy pushback” from gun-rights advocates who might insist on a right to make citizen’s arrests.
“It seems to me that one strand of the gun-rights movement is that people need to be able to act, precisely because they can’t count on public authorities to act in time,” Hartnett said.
The report is tentative, and the commission is still accepting public comments it will consider before issuing a final report. Comments can be emailed to [email protected], faxed to (973) 648-3123, or mailed to 153 Halsey St., 7th floor, Box 47016, Newark, N.J. 07102.
