USC18 Sec. 1385 the Posse Comitatus Act

[Squire Robertsson]

More than once this law has been cited to explain the DOD's seeming and actual inaction. If you read the law, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room in it.

Sec. 1385. - Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus
Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

The Wikipedia Posse Comitatus Article.

 

[carpro]

Look up "Stafford Act". It relates directly to limited exceptions to "Posse Comitatus".

 

[Fred the Baptist]

I quit using Wikipedia when I read this entry on their site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction:

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by many of its readers. Lots of people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes an hour, all of which are recorded on the page history and the Recent Changes page. Nonsense and vandalism are usually removed quickly, and their creators banned.

If anyone can write articles and anyone can edit them, how can anyone possibly rely on the information?

However, I do agree that our military forces should not be used for law enforcement.

Many years ago we went to Panama which was then under the dictator Omar Torrijos. Law enforcement for the whole country, on the national and local levels, was handled by their military, the National Guard. We saw the soldier/policemen with automatic weapons at most intersections in Panama City. I assure you, we do not want this or anything like it in the United States.

Thanks,
Fred

 

[Squire Robertsson]

I did check the link to the USC. The article properly quoted the law in full. However, of interest are the external links to articles that are comparitively fixed in stone.