It’s time to ban citizen’s arrests in Delaware

In 2020, the world watched in horror as Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was chased down and shot while jogging through a neighborhood in Georgia. His killers claimed they were performing a citizen’s arrest. That excuse – rooted in laws with a deeply racist past – was invoked to justify what was clearly a modern-day lynching. 

Delaware now has an opportunity to ensure that never happens here. 

We are the prime sponsors of House Bill 153, which would ban private individuals from conducting arrests or detaining others unless specifically authorized by law. It is a commonsense measure that not only affirms the role of trained law enforcement, but also severs Delaware’s code from one of the most racially charged legal arguments in American history. 

The concept of citizen’s arrest predates the United States, stretching back to English common law. But in the American South, particularly after the Civil War, these laws were co-opted to control, detain and terrorize Black Americans. In states like Georgia and Mississippi, citizen’s arrest laws were used to empower white residents to act as self-appointed enforcers of racial hierarchy – often with violent and deadly results. Delaware was not immune: in 1903, a Black farmer named George White was burned to death by a crowd in Wilmington after he was accused of raping a white woman. No one was ever jailed in connection with his death. 

Citizen’s arrest laws persisted through Jim Crow and were seldom applied equitably. Instead, they created a legal gray area in which vigilante violence could be rationalized and racial profiling could be excused. Even today, the risk is disproportionately borne by communities of color. When someone exercises a citizen’s arrest, it often reflects not civic duty, but racial bias and misplaced authority. 

HB 153 takes a critical step forward by recognizing that public safety is best served when arrests are made by trained professionals accountable to the law – not by untrained civilians acting on instinct, emotion or prejudice. Importantly, it does not prohibit someone from protecting themselves and others under Delaware’s self-defense laws or assisting law enforcement when asked to do so in an emergency. What it does do is draw a clear and necessary line: Chasing someone down, detaining them or threatening violence in the name of a so-called citizen’s arrest is not acceptable and never was. 

Some may argue that citizens should retain the right to act when police aren't immediately available. But in practice, citizen’s arrests have rarely functioned as a tool of justice – and too often as a cover for injustice. States like North Carolina and New York have already significantly limited or effectively ended this practice. Delaware should do the same. 

Support for HB 153 is about more than public safety; it’s about racial justice, legal clarity and our commitment to all Delawareans.