GA Citizen's Arrest Repeal Passes First Test

ATLANTA — A bill to abolish Georgia’s ages-old citizen’s arrest law passed the judicial committee on Thursday.

House Bill 479 unanimously passed the Georgia House Judiciary Committee, completing the first step in making it a law, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Georgia NAACP President James Woodall immediately announced the news on Twitter and outlined the next steps.

The law will repeal the Civil War-era statute allow civilians to detain perceived criminals, while still allowing them to protect themselves from people threatening to harm them. It will also allow business owners, security personnel, and truck weigh station attendants to in the line of duty hold would-be wrong-doers until police can be called and arrive.

Gov. Brian Kemp introduced the bill last month nearly a year after men accused of fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery — an unarmed Black man jogging through his neighborhood in Brunswick — went for months without being arrested or charged because they invoked citizen arrest privileges claiming they suspected Arbery of committing a crime.

Activists across the state Thursday expressed their joy over clearing this first hurdle.

“We don’t want people to step into the shoes of officers in law enforcement,” Marissa Dodson of the Southern Center for Human Rights told the Savannah Morning News.

Citing work to help advance this bill as well as one to improve education across the state, Woodall said he was glad to have played a role in getting one step closer to ending the citizen’s arrest law.