Citizen’s arrests in Georgia to face limits in General Assembly bill
ATLANTA — State officials unveiled details of a bipartisan bill Tuesday, Feb. 16, aimed at revising Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law to limit who can detain someone suspected of a crime.
The first major criminaljustice measure proposed in the 2021 legislative session, sponsored by Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, would repeal a current Georgia law that broadly allows private citizens to detain someone who commits a crime in their presence or during an escape attempt.
It would still allow owners and employees in businesses including restaurants, as well as security guards and out-of-jurisdiction police officers, to detain those believed to have committed a crime on their property – so long as they’re handed over to local authorities within an hour.
The proposed changes would not affect the state’s stand-yourground law or any other legal protections for Georgians who seek to reasonably defend themselves from crimes committed against themselves or others, officials stressed at a news conference Tuesday, Feb. 16.
“Our bill to overhaul the citizen’s arrest statute is a balanced approach to protecting the lives and livelihoods of ourselves, our friends [and] our neighbors, while also preventing rogue vigilante-ism from threatening the security and God-given potential of all Georgians,” said Gov. Brian Kemp.
Kemp, joined by more than a dozen top state lawmakers from both parties, called the state’s current Civil War-era citizen’s arrest law “an antiquated law that is ripe for abuse.”
He said the bill stems from the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was jogging in a neighborhood outside Brunswick on Feb. 23, 2020, when two White men who suspected him of robbing a nearby home under construction shot him dead while trying to detain him.
The two men, Travis and Gregory McMichael, were arrested months later after protests over police brutality and racial injustice swept across the country and drew attention to the lack of action in the case by coastal Georgia authorities. They have pleaded not guilty, citing the citizen’s arrest law.
Anger over Arbery’s death and protests over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota on May 25, 2020, convinced a bipartisan slate of Georgia lawmakers last June to pass legislation outlawing hate crimes in the state. The citizen’s arrest bill follows up on that measure, Kemp said.
“Like the anti- hate crimes legislation, reforming Georgia’s citizen’s arrest statute is first and foremost about who we are as a state,” Kemp said Tuesday, Feb. 16. “In Georgia, we value lives … regardless of race, creed or culture.”
The bill comes as Democratic lawmakers push a wide-ranging package of criminal-justice reform proposals including bans
on certain police tactics like noknock warrants and chokeholds, citizen-led oversight of inquiries into officer-involved shootings and stronger standards for useof-force training.
Republican lawmakers have taken a less-expansive approach to criminal justice this session, so far filing bills to ease employment challenges for people on probation and carrying out Kemp’s priority to crack down harder on human trafficking.
So far, Reeves’ measure on citizen’s arrests faces the best odds for passing in the Repub
lican-controlled General Assembly, despite wariness by some Democratic leaders to accept the proposed legal protections for business owners to detain suspected criminals.
Rep. Calvin Smyre, D-Columbus, who is the legislature’s longest-serving member, sought to quell concerns from within his party Tuesday, Feb. 16, by assuring the bill has backing from criminal-justice advocates and has elicited “excitement” from Arbery’s family.
“I think we’re on pretty good footing,” Smyre said after the
news conference. “We assured the [Arbery] family and those in Brunswick that citizen’s arrest would be our next move. … It would have been an abdication of our responsibility if we had not touched citizen’s arrest early on in this legislative session.”
The bill also has support from James Woodall, the president of Georgia’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, saying he “fully endorses” Reeves’ measure.
“We urge members of both parties and in both chambers to do the same,” Woodall said.
Down 20-8 after the first quarter. Playing in a swelteringly hot gymnasium. Facing both an outstanding opponent and a large, loud and mostly hostile crowd. On the road. With a region championship hanging in the balance.
A lesser team probably would have folded, but the LaFayette Ramblers are not a lesser team.
Showing their championship pedigree, earned over the past four-plus years of playing in big-time basketball games, LaFayette tied the game in the second quarter, took the lead for good in the third and finally put away homestanding Sonoraville, 58-48, the claim the 6-AAA tournament title on Saturday night.
“I was proud of our resolve,” head coach Hank Peppers said of his team’s third region title in the past four seasons. “These type of games are like roller coasters and, more often than not, the teams that are more level and steady are the ones that win the games.”
Not only was it the second straight region championship for the Ramblers, who
won 6-AAAA last year before dropping down a classification, it marked the first time in LaFayette’s long and storied basketball history that the program had ever won region titles in backto-back years.
“The defense, the effort...I couldn’t be more proud,” Peppers added, “especially being the first ever back-toback regions boys’ championships (for the program).”
The second-seeded Phoenix led 8-5 midway through the first quarter, but went on a 12-3 run to end the period as bad memories of a 65-40 loss on Jan. 18 in the building, aptly referred to as “The Furnace”, likely came flooding back to the minds of the LaFayette fans who made the drive to Gordon County for the night’s title tilt.
But if that humiliating defeat was in the minds of the Rambler players themselves, they certainly refused to show it.
Three-pointers by DeCameron Porter and Junior Barber were part of a 12-2 start to the second quarter that cut Sonoraville’s lead down to 22-20 with two minutes left before halftime and the top-seeded Ramblers would eventually go into intermission down a bucket at 27-25.
“Number one, Sonoraville’s got a great team and we want to give them all the respect,” Peppers explained. “Playing on the road and on their home floor for the region championship, we knew we were going to get their best shot. But I was so proud of the way we weathered the storm. When we went into halftime just down two after falling behind 20-8 in the first quarter, I knew we were in good shape.”
Porter knocked down a 3-pointer to give LaFayette its first lead, 32-31, with 5:39 left in the third period. The Ramblers slowly stretched out their advantage to 43-37 by the end of the quarter, but star guard Orry Darnell got the Phoenix back to within three points of lead, 45-42 with 5:46 remaining in the contest.
Porter answered with a basket coming out of a timeout and later came up big on the defensive end to block a Darnell lay-up attempt with four minutes to play. However, Darnell drew a foul on a 3-point shot with 2:40 remaining and knocked down all three free shots, cutting LaFayette’s lead back down to three, 48-45.
Sonoraville then begin full-court pressure for the first time in the game and had some early success as LaFayette had to use a couple of time-outs to maintain possession. However, the Ramblers finally broke the press and did so in emphatic fashion as Porter’s rimrocking slam with 2:09 to play boosted the lead back to five.
Darnell came back with a basket and a Murray Somers free throw with 1:17 to play again made it a one-possession game at 50-48. But LaFayette broke the press again and Porter would draw a foul with 1:10 to go. The Ramblers’ lone senior hit both free throws put his team back up by four and LaFayette got a welcome gift as the Phoenix threw the ball away on their next possession.
Led by point guard Jaylon Ramsey, LaFayette was able to dribble away nearly 30 seconds off the clock before finding Zach Barrett in the lane for a short jumper off the glass to make it a 5448 game with 36 seconds to go. Porter then grabbed a big defensive rebound after Sonoraville missed a 3-pointer on its ensuing possession.
Forced to foul, the Phoenix put Barber on the line with 23 seconds to play. The junior missed the front end of the 1-and-1, but outhustled four Phoenix defenders to the ball to get his own rebound. He drew another foul with 20.3 seconds left and made both shots as the Rambler Nation began to sense the championship.
Darnell would come up short on a last-gasp 3-point attempt for the Phoenix and Hadaway knocked down a pair of free throws with 10.7 seconds left to account for the final points of the night.
Pepper said one of the keys to the victory was his team’s lack of panic in the early part of the game.
“We’ve played in front of big crowds before and against some really high level teams, so there’s no substitute for experience. Plus, we really got on the boards. We got outrebounded in the first quarter, but we really kind of dominated the rest of the way and that was a key, too.”
Porter had 26 points, giving him 56 during the two games he played in the tournament, while Hadaway followed up Friday night’s 25-point performance with 20 more on Saturday. Barber battled through some early foul trouble to finish with seven points, while three from Ramsey and two each by Barrett and Jordan Kennerly rounded out the scoring.
Darnell led all scorers with 27 points for the Phoenix.
LaFayette boys 82, LFO 61
Up by six points at the end of the first quarter, the Ramblers outscored the fourthseeded Warriors, 19-5, in the second stanza and cruised to a victory over the Warriors in a tournament semifinal on Friday.
Porter scored 30 points and Hadway picked up 25 points in the victory. Barrett scored a season-high 18, while six points from Ramsey and three by Barber rounded out the scoring.
LaFayette (20-1) will open the Class AAA state tournament next week at home against North Hall (11-12), the No. 4 seed from Region 7, while Sonoraville (20-4) will also be at home to take on Region 7 No. 3 seed Cherokee Bluff (15-11).
Peppers added that winning the region was a total and complete team effort, from the starters to the bench players to the assistant coaches and even to his former coach and mentor, Tommy Swanson, who was on hand to see the Ramblers claim the title.
“It takes everybody being on the same page,” he added. “When everybody is pulling in the same direction you go a lot further. I’m grateful for the experience, but I’m also grateful for my players, my assistants and grateful for LaFayette High School. They really support boys’ basketball. The student section really gets behind us and that really fuels us.”