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Sheriff's Posse Comitatus [SPC]

The common law courts and sovereign citizens are the direct ideological descendants of the Posse Comitatus; any attempt to understand the common law courts must start with the this group. The Posse, though, is not necessarily an easy entity to understand.

Sheriffs trace their heritage back to ninth century England when the King had a personal representative in each Shire (a Shire was the equivalent of an American County) whose title was the Shire Reeve. Their responsibilities as magistrates and chief law enforcement officers gave them broad duties and powers, but they did not have to act alone. Each English citizen was required to get involved in keeping the peace. As a peace officer, the Sheriff had the full right of "posse comitatus" (Latin for “power of the county”). The power was to call out every man between 15 and 80, excluding only the clergy and infirm, in case of emergency.

Exigencies may arise when a sheriff and his duly appointed force are not able to cope with the necessity of a particular temporary situation. The law gives recognition to the fact that a posse comitatus may sometimes be necessary, and “reposes in the sheriff the power to determine when such a necessity exists.” The import of these statutes is to empower a sheriff or deputy to call upon, or even compel, citizens to provide assistance in a temporary emergency, where he needs immediate assistance, and law enforcement officers are unavailable.

Maintenance or vigilante violence is viewed as one of three types of violence lying on a continuum of intended change. It is defined as acts of coercion in violation of societal limits but intended to defend the prevailing distribution of values and resources from some form of attack or subversion. The nature of the participants and the degree of organization characterizing their activities leads to a fourfold typology: (1) private, spontaneous vigilantism, as in the case of 29 New York cab drivers who chased and caught 2 robbery suspects; (2) private, organized vigilantism which might include such diverse groups as a 'Sheriff's Posse Comitatus' and an urban ghetto group with drug pushers as targets; (3) official, spontaneous vigilantism or the systematic application of force, undertaken most commonly by the State; and (4) official, organized vigilantism in which excessive coercion has been a long-term policy of certain security and enforcement organizations.

In 1969 a retired dry cleaner named Henry "Mike" Beach (a fomier member of the 1930s pro-Nazi group, the Silver Shirts) formed the a group called the Sheriff‘s Posse Comitatus. In California, William Potter Gale started a similar organization, the United States Christian Posse Association, around the same time.

From these beginnings, branches formed in other areas of the country, numbering around 80 or so by the mid-1970s. From the start, the Posse caused problems for local, state and federal authorities. As early as 1974, Thomas Stockheirner, head of the Posse in Wisconsin, was convicted on charges of assaulting an Internal Revenue Service agent. Indeed, the normally placid state of Wisconsin became a hotbed of Posse activity, due to leaders Stockheimer, James Wickstrom and Donald Minniecheskie.

In northeastern Wisconsin, Wickstrom - who styled himself the "national director of counterinsurgency" of the Posse and liked to conduct paramilitary training - established the "Constitutional Township of Tigerton Dells," a "township" that consisted of a compound of trailers on a farm lot. From there Wickstrom waged a war against local authorities that resulted, in the mid-1980s, in the eventual destruction of the "township" and Wickstrom's arrest (one of many).

The Sheriff's Posse Comitatus [SPC], also known as Citizens Law Enforcement Research Committee (CLERC), started in 1973 in Portland, Oregon, by Henry Lamont (Mike) Beach, and was a nonaf£iliate offshoot of the Identity Group (IG), a California-based tax rebellion organization. The SPC claimed the Federal Reserve System and the graduated income tax were not lawful, and the Federal judiciary had attempted to establish a dictatorship of the courts over the citizens of the republic. The SPC called for the establishment of a posse in each county to assist the only legitimate law enforcement authority, the county sheriff, in combating the unlawful acts of others, particularly those of Federal and state officials.

In other states as well, most notably Kansas, Posse members repeatedly clashed - with resulting deaths and injuries - with local authorities. It was, however, Gordon Kahl of North Dakota who achieved the most notoriety and became the Posse's ?rst real martyr. Kahl was a virulent racist and tax protester who traveled to farm protest meetings across the country's midsection to win converts to the Posse cause.

On February 13, 1983, at approximately 6:00 p.m., a shootout occurred at a roadblock in Medina, North Dakota, between law enforcement officials and five members of the SPC. The shootout was the result of an attempt to arrest Gordon W. Kahl for probation violation. The five members of the SPC, believed to have been heavily armed, opened fire on the United States Marshals and police officers. The shootout left one United States Marshal and one Deputy Marshal dead. In addition, one Deputy Marshal, one Deputy Sheriff, one Medina County Police Officer, and Gordon Kahl's son, Yori Kahl, were injured. The SPC members fled the scene in two cars.

On June 3, 1983 four U.S. marshals and two local law enforcement of?cers set up a roadblock to arrest Kahl for violating the terms of his probation. A shootout ensued which resulted in the death of two of the marshals and the wounding of two others. Also wounded was Kahl’s twenty-year-old son. When Kahl fled the state, a nationwide manhunt - and nationwide publicity - began. Months later, Kahl was tracked down in Arkansas, where he died during another gun?ght in which a county sheriff was killed.

On October 31, 1984, two members of a chapter of the Sheriff's Posse Comitatus (SPC), a paramilitary ultra right-wing terrorist group, were arrested in Minnesota and charged with various firearms violations. Information was developed that these individuals were stockpiling weapons, ammunition, and engaging in paramilitary training. Searches executed after issuance of warrants resulted in the recovery of explosives and a list of targets marked for bombing and assassination.

The farm crisis of the early 1980s caused membership to rise greatly, particularly in the plains states. Eventually, though, the Posse declined as an effective organization, largely through loss of leadership. Faced with repeated imprisonments, some leaders such as James Wickstrom scaled back their activities. Other leaders, such as Henry Beach and William Potter Gale, died natural deaths, the latter while appealing a conviction for threatening IRS agents. Still others, like Kahl, died violently. The result was that by the late 1980s the Posse was ?oundering. Always locally based, pockets of the Posse continued to survive here and there, but it was no longer a force. As an organized right-wing group, the Posse did not really survive.

But the Posse had never been simply an organization - indeed, it was hardly ever well-organized. The Posse Comitatus was much more durable as an ideology. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of people who never formally belonged to any Posse group nevertheless subscribed to Posse ideology. The belief system survived even as the group faded.

Another de?ning characteristic of Posse ideology is the peculiar method by which Posse members justi?ed their positions. They did this through an emphasis - some would say obsession - on "hidden history." In other words, they believed that the true history of the United States - and thus the true laws, the true obligations of citizens, the true govemment - had been hidden from the American citizen by a massive, long-lasting conspiracy. Indeed, the Posse’s handbook noted that "the rule for the Judiciary, both State and Federal, has been subtle subversion of the Constitution of these United States. The subversion and contempt for the Constitution by the Judiciary is joined by the Executive and Legislative branches of government. It is apparent that the Judiciary has attempted to alter our form of Government. By unlawful administrative acts and procedures, they have attempted to establish a Dictatorship of the Courts over the citizens of this Republic. The legal profession has, with few exceptions, conspired with the Judiciary for this purpose."

Later Posse leaders would develop this simple beginning into a complex tale of conspiracy and cover-up, over a period of over a hundred years, designed to subvert liberty. Given this notion, that the true laws of the United States had been covered up by conspiring legislators, judges and lawyers, Posse adherents seek to uncover the hidden history that has been deprived them. They do this through searching through law books and legal codes, the writings of the founders and early legal scholars, the Uniform Commercial Code, the Bible, and other documents.

"People say we’re creating our own laws," said Montana Freeman Russell Landers, “We’re not creating anything. It’s right there in the law already." Indeed, practically any document can become fodder for a Posse governmental theory. There is no end to what a creative Posse mind can come up with.

One example is the "Missing Thirteenth Amendment," popularized by Texas activist Alfred Adask. Posse adherents discovered a draft Constitutional amendment from the republic's early days, one that would deny citizenship to Americans accepting titles of nobility. This was one of many amendments which failed because not enough states rati?ed it. But Posse adherents decided not only that it had been rati?ed, but that its rati?cation had been covered up by a conspiracy. Their erroneous beliefs were bolstered by discovering some old printed copies of the Constitution which listed the draft amendment along with other, actually rati?ed amendments.

Posse "scholars" combed through state archives, looking for votes on rati?cation, or hints of cover-up, and concluded, not surprisingly, that there had indeed been a cover-up. Why did the Posse spend all this energy? Because of the way that they interpreted the meaning of the amendment. To the Posse, all lawyers had "titles of nobility," because they put the term "esquire" after their names. Therefore, lawyers were not legally citizens of the United States - but they had engaged to cover up the Thirteenth Amendment, which would have taken away so much of their power.

Another example of Posse creativity was the Committee of the States, the brainchild of Posse leader William Potter Gale in the 1980s. Gale argued that the Articles of Confederation, the document that governed the United States before the Constitution was rati?ed, had never been officially repealed and remained in force. Gale then pointed to a clause in the Articles which said that Congress could appoint a committee that would handle the general affairs of the United States when Congress was not in session (under the Articles, there was no executive branch). Gale interpreted this to mean that the Committee of the States was a second Congress, with full and equal powers - he promptly arranged for a (self-appointed) Committee to come into being.

Many of the beliefs prevalent in the antigovernment movement are rooted in the racist, antiSemitic ideology that animated the Posse Comitatus in the 1970s. This antigovernment movement emerged in its current form during the 1990s in response to federal gun control measures and the deadly standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco. It is composed of hundreds of armed militias and other organizations that typically subscribe to a hodgepodge of antigovernment, conspiratorial theories, including the belief that U.S. political and economic elites are part of international conspiracy to create a one-world government known as the “New World Order.” It includes so-called “sovereign citizens,” who believe they are immune to most federal and state laws and who have been deemed a terrorism threat by the FBI.