Interesting Situation

What is the name of your state? Utah

What is the term used when a soldier uses their military status in a civillian situation without civillian request?

Example. An officer in the Army is driving along a road that leads to a military base. It's the only destination of the road and there are no turnoffs. The officer is cut off by a civillian driver driving recklessly. The officer calls ahead and has the driver detained by the guards at the gate of the base until they arrive. When the officer arrives they threaten the civillian but present no tickets or press any charges.

What is the law that was broken? What option does the civillian driver have?

What is the law that was broken? What option does the civillian driver have?

Click to expand...

The law that was broken was reckless driving by the civilian.

The civilian can get all mad, or not.

Legally there's probably no way the civilian could do anything about it. Even MPs don't usually have any authority for incidents that happen off-post. And gate guards probably don't have any either.

On the other hand the civilian is not really 'suffering' anything that would be criminal or lawsuit-worthy from their treatment.

(QUOTE)Example. An officer in the Army is driving along a road that leads to a military base. It's the only destination of the road and there are no turnoffs. The officer is cut off by a civillian driver driving recklessly. The officer calls ahead and has the driver detained by the guards at the gate of the base until they arrive. When the officer arrives they threaten the civillian but present no tickets or press any charges.(QUOTE)

This is a old post...However.....

Once the officer called the front gate to detain the driver, civilian police should have been called. They may have, the poster's question was sketchy. If the military officer did not want to write out a statement and press charges, then the civilian is on his merry way.

It was the officers duty if he wanted to press charges in the world of Civilians. The SP's have no jurisdiction on the matter.

Posse comitatus

I think the law you are remembering is the Posse Comitatus Act (18 USC 1385). The Posse Comitatus Act is still good law but has an ugly history because it was intended to make Jim Crow state laws possible.

At the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War, Posse Comitatus was passed by Congress to prevent the use of the military from protecting the Federal civil rights of former slaves. When the Southern states came back into the union, their agenda was to prevent enforcement of the 14th and 15th Amendments. By prohibiting the army from being used to enforce civilian law, the former slaves were left to the mercy of southern sheriffs. Posse Comitatus is still much loved by right wingers (who often sympathize with its original goal).

The officer who phoned the military gate guards to bust the reckless driver could be seen as enforcing civilian traffic laws which would be in violation of Posse Comitatus. This is an old post so the statute of limitations has run but an Article 138 complaint against the officer might have been possible. Hard to see it prevailing on these facts though.