Pennsylvania posse won't saddle up
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Sheriffs in the Old West — or at least in old westerns — never had to sweat small stuff like workers compensation coverage when rounding up a posse to hunt the bad guys.
But a Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, sheriff has run afoul of the county’s insurance carriers in his attempts to create a modern-day posse.
Sheriff Wes Thurston made local headlines in December when he announced his intent to recruit a 500-member volunteer posse to “assist the sheriff and his deputies when needed in the event of: a catastrophe, a natural disaster, missing children or endangered persons, in information gathering and in other non-emergency situations,” according to local news website GantDaily.com.
County commissioners informed Sheriff Thurston in late January that insurers Pennsylvania Counties Risk Pool and PComp, which provide liability and comp coverage, respectively, for county agencies would not cover posse members. Commissioners urged him to pay for alternate coverage “with existing funds from the Sheriff’s Office budget or, preferably, from some source other than taxpayer funds” and discouraged the pursuit of posse activities until coverage was obtained, the website said.
Volunteer posse applications had been available at the sheriff’s office as well as the local market, gun shop, Army and Navy surplus store, hardware stores and other businesses.
The insurers did not weigh in on required coverages for angry mobs storming the castle with garden tools.
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