What Exactly is the Sheriffs Posse?

And then the posse nation, or U.S. posse, is kind of the posse for the nation. And we want to support all the sheriffs. We want to support across state lines. We want to be a U.S. group of posse members across the country that share intel with one another, that support one another, that train one another, that help one another. I’m not going to go on and on and on. But we play a critical role in this. And so I want you to know how important your posse dues are. Every bit that you pay helps us have our incredible seminars, helps us have this weekly webinar.

The seminars are in person that we had. We had one in Florida and one in Vegas for 2024. Two huge conferences. They were very well attended. And so everything you do matters. And this posse plan is the way we’re going. And I thought I would double down and kind of provide a little bit of a history of posse so people could kind of understand the origins and what they’re all about while we see if we can get our sheriff that’s going to join us, Bob Songer, to be with us. Can you work on that, Jack? Okay, he’s here.

Excellent. So let me do the quick history. Let me do the quick history and then we’ll bring Bob Songer on because he’s really the posse expert. He’s probably forgotten more about posse than I even know. But let me take a redneck stab at this first and then we’ll go from there, if that makes any sense. Because a lot of times we want to put this on the kitchen table. And sometimes when you’re in law enforcement or you’re in a given, you know, a sphere of society or something, you just believe you got to be an expert or something to understand it.

You don’t, people. The posse is not full of law enforcement. Oh, by the way, all, you know, former and whatever law enforcement people can be involved in it. But a posse is merely the people. And if you look up the definition of the word posse, it basically says a group of people that gather together to support their sheriff for law enforcement and carrying out his or her duties. Now, posse, the term has changed over the years slightly. Back in the 1800s and stuff like that, 1700s, posse were really used by the sheriffs to, hey, when there was an outlaw on the road and there wasn’t great communication, he would deputize a bunch of guys and then leave the bar and head out and take care of business and hunt them down and create accountability.

You know, those are the old days of a posse. But really the term posse comes from the old English reality. Okay. And so does the shire reef come from the 800s. Chris Ann Hall speaks on this very eloquently. But I digress. The sheriff eventually became an advocate for the people elected by the people over time. The posse then has become his support organization to carry out his duties. Posse’s are primarily volunteer with rare exception because the goal is to save the people money. The goal is to create, well, I don’t want to use the word militia, but I will.

How’s that? Take a militia and it has no authority from the proper role of government. It’s independent, but it has no authority. Does it have a right to exist? Yes, if used properly. But imagine taking a militia and imagine saying, we’re not going to focus on the militia idea unless the sheriff deems it necessary or the governor or the president of the United States for that matter. But right now we’re going to call it a peaceful volunteer organization that supports the sheriff as he directs. So understand the sheriff is the lead of a local posse.

He sets the rules, the guidelines, the details of how it’s all going to work in his jurisdiction. And then they go forward. And so the reason I bring this up is because everybody wants to run away from the word militia and a posse is much broader than a militia. A posse might have to do with search and rescue. A posse might have to do with serving at a county fair and being the eyes and ears. A posse relates to community policing. And yes, if there needs to be a malicious side of a posse for defense purposes, by all means, the sheriff has the authority to deputize and call upon that.

But in peacetime, a posse is a peaceful organization. It’s designed to support the sheriff. And so that’s why we want a national posse through the CSPOA on the national level. And we’ll coordinate. We’ll collaborate. We’ll work together. And when posse are formed by sheriffs and people join their local posse, they can come to our broader group and get support and guidance and direction and clarity. And ideas from 3,000 jurisdictions across the country in all 50 constitutional republics. Imagine that. So with that history, the last point I want to make is this. Then there became a term called posse comitatus.

And you say, what does that mean? If you ask the modern media, they say, oh, that’s just a white supremacy movement. Anybody who’s involved in it is a white supremacist. Okay, you’ve lost your marbles. You’re off your rock. And you don’t understand history at all. Okay, there was one guy in the 70s that they claimed was a white supremacist that we have nothing to do with that advocated for sheriffs, posse and posse comitatus. Okay, but ignore that because it’s irrelevant to the discussion. Posse comitatus comes from the English as well. And the idea is when the shiref led his jurisdiction with citizen support, community policing, then what happened, ladies and gentlemen is, hey, anybody who wanted to try to upend the sheriff and get more power than the sheriff wanted to bring the military in.

And that’s where posse comitatus came into being saying, no, we’re not going to let the military be used against the citizenry. And so posse comitatus says, hey, you know what? We don’t want the military mixing with civilians. That’s dangerous. That smacks up tyranny. Let’s leave the checks and balances of the Constitution. Let’s leave the jurisdictional sheriff responsibility, and let’s give him a volunteer community policing organization if he chooses. Well, many sheriffs are now choosing to have posse’s for obvious reasons, and we’re suggesting we the people can volunteer. With that, Sheriff Bob Sanger, click attack Washington.

Welcome to the conversation, and how bad have I beaten this up, sir? Your mic is off. Sheriff Sanger, turn on your mic, yep. There’s a button over there someplace, right below you on the left, usually. Far left, maybe. That should do it. There you go. We can hear you now. Talk a little louder, but you’re great, my friend. Anyway, I didn’t butcher that too bad from a redneck point of view, but I wanted to give people kind of the kitchen table citizen point of view, so they understand their role, Sheriff. Sam, you’re spot on.

You described it just to the deed. That’s what it’s all about, community policing with good citizens that we do background checks on to make sure they’re legitimate, don’t have felony records and all that kind of stuff. We bet them, but they’re volunteers and they’re community pleased, good citizens helping out the sheriff on various activities throughout the county. Now, some policies are ceremonial. They have them on horseback and parades and so forth. Our policy is a working policy. We have about 174 members in our policy at this time, shooting for 200 members, a cabinet 200, but they’re a big help to us because we’ve got a lot of community activities that go on during the year, a parade, rodeos, you know, we’ve got a county fair, all kinds of stuff goes on.

And I’m lucky if I can field three commission deputies a shift for 1,494 miles. So I’ve got a lot of area to cover, our deputies do, and in addition to that, our call load is way up. We’ve got about 23,000 population in our county. We border the Yakima Indian reservation. So we’re short of manpower, commissioned officers. So what helps with the posse, they save our bacon. They do parking vehicles at rodeos, at special events, traffic control at parade, beer gardens, security in beer gardens, various things like this. Now, the posse does not have arrest authority unless I give it to them under certain circumstances.

But as a general rule, and I have the manual here that we have, the posse does not stop vehicles, ID people and all this kind of stuff out there enforcing the law. There are eyes, ears, their job, when they’re out there patrolling, we have a magnetic placard that goes on the side of their personal vehicle, and it might add all this is volunteer on their part as far as fuel and everything else, maintenance. And the placard says, click at that county sheriff’s posse with a star. And they drive through neighborhoods, they run to the store.

All of that is counted as crime prevention because they’re out there. Their job is to observe, document and report. They see a crime about to be committed, as committed, call it in, have a deputy respond to that location. And we have been very successful on several occasions where criminals got caught in the act because of posse activity and was able to identify that. Now, having said all the good things about posse, which there’s many, many more things I can say about them, we not only have the posse volunteers, we also have hound handlers that go after predator cats and bears according to state law.

We also have five people, pilots that fly for us at no cost. They’re our air wing of the posse and make them special deputies. And we have special deputies. These are volunteers that work courtroom security, all free of charge to the taxpayers. And you hit on it a moment ago, Sam, when you mentioned that it was volunteer to save the county money and things like that. And that’s exactly what the posse is. But I have people that will gaslight it. Oh, Sheriff Sanger’s out there with the posse committatas. They’re going to be chasing down immigrants and they’re going to be doing this.

It’s all BS. It’s a far left woke group that created the problem in the first place on the borders, but created the problem and they want to paint constitutional sheriffs with a brush that is negative, that white supremacy and all that. That’s all nonsense. And what they don’t tell you, Sam, when they want to beat up on the constitutional sheriffs, those constitutional sheriffs should stick up for their rights as well. But they don’t imagine that. Yeah, but they don’t mention that. You know, this posse is something really important to understand and every posse across the country is not identical because remember the sheriff is the leader of the posse.

He’s the chief executive within his jurisdiction and the volunteers are there to serve him. And each posse runs slightly different based on how the sheriff wants to run it. Some want to have search and rescue involved or different departments for different things. Joe Arpaio had a Department of Special Project. The citizens came to him and said, we believe that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is bogus and it’s fraudulent. So Joe Arpaio created a task force to work on that special project that he basically pulled former police officers and investigators and different people to kind of dig into that.

So the point that I’m getting at is there’s no end to what the posse can be used for as long as it relates to his duty of law enforcement, of his duty of community policing. And this community policing, this is where there’s no end to the service that can be provided, Sheriff Sanger. That’s true. That’s very true. But here’s a little tidbit that we have a new governor that’s going to take office, Robert Bob Ferguson, and his return. But my understanding, he’s pushing a House bill or a Senate bill.

I haven’t got the yet, but it will restrict sheriffs in the state from putting together a posse, volunteer or not. So obviously they feel threatened in their minds about the posse. And I explained the posse’s duties. They’re a threat to nobody. They’re a help to people, do vacation checks and various other things when people are gone. I mean, it’s a working and it’s a very positive program, but they’re doing everything they can to tear it down. Think of it, ladies and gentlemen, as the community policing that we highlighted that it is, which community policing just means, hey, those who are in law enforcement get to know their communities so well, so well that they became the eyes and ears of a jurisdiction.

And they are involved in the, let me say it this way, the advancement of the community in peaceful times, so serve, defending of the community in problematic times, and protecting of the community in terms of their rights. That’s what these posse’s do. Think of a neighborhood watch on steroids, led by an executive officer that knows what he’s doing at all times. Isn’t that what a posse is? Absolutely. You nailed it. I mean, that’s exactly what it is. [tr:trw].