RESISTING ARREST

It would be my guess the average citizen thinks "resisting arrest" means fighting the cops. I probably thought so myself, at some point. (Who can remember?)

In fact, depending on where you live, you could be guilty of this crime by doing anything to hinder or delay a police officer in the lawful performance of his duties. That goes for EMTs as well.

If a cop tells you to turn around and put your hands behind your back, don't just stand there and say: "Why?"

That's a crime. Turn around and put your hands behind your back before you demand to know why he's arresting you. Could make all the difference.

If you're walking along the street and an ambulance screeches to a stop beside you and the driver asks where he can find some street—and you deliberately point him in the wrong direction—it's possible you've committed the crime of "resisting arrest." (As odd as that sounds.)

That big guy in NYC who was accused of selling loose cigarettes was guilty of resisting arrest because he failed to cooperate with the police. It doesn't matter if he's guilty of the crime of selling loose cigarettes or not.

(It also doesn't matter if in your opinion the selling of loose cigarettes ought not be a crime.)

The guy told the cops to leave him alone. He evaded their hands when they tried to grab of him. His fate was sealed by his own decision. And by "fate" I don't mean his death; I mean what happened next: the take down and arrest. I believe the death to be accidental.

Once you defy the police they will take you into custody in only one posture: on your belly with your hands behind your back.

There are a number of tools and techniques that can be used by cops to get an arrestee into the desired position:

(1) Use a Taser to drop the fellow to the ground, then land on him and wrestle him into position.

(2) Hit him repeatedly with batons until the suspect voluntarily places himself in the approved posture (Rodney King's police adventure—though King was also Tased).

(3) Jump on the guy with multiple personnel and force him into position, pressing him into the pavement to keep him from moving during the cuffing process. The cops call it "swarming."

The third method was used on Eric Garner, the big guy in NYC. During the take down, one of the cops grabbed the man around the neck. It's widely been labeled a "chokehold," but if that's what it was, it was a poor example of one. Garner would've been unconscious at the end of a combat chokehold, and that didn't happen.

Most likely, Garner's breathing problems (aside from his reported asthma) came from lying belly-down on the sidewalk and having a crapload of cops lean their combined weight on him—added to his own obvious bulk. It was brutal, but not illegal. And it all happened because he refused to allow himself to be arrested.

So what's the solution? A rule that says fat guys are not to be arrested for petty crimes because they might not survive the take-down process?

I think people need to learn that arguing with a cop who wants to arrest you is an offense called resisting arrest. That jerking your hands away when cops try to grab you is right on the edge of fighting the police. That once you get this far your arrest is now assured, and it's only a question of how hard they're going to land on you when they put you into position to be cuffed.

And yes, cops do this to white guys, too.

Now folks are in the street protesting a Grand Jury's decision not the indict the cop whose arm was around Garner's neck. The verdict would barely be controversial, except for the fact Garner is black and everybody "knows" white cops murdered him for the crime of being black.

Folks are also angry the Grand Jury did not release the complete evidence in the case. Why would that make any difference? Folks got all the facts from the Michael Brown case—did nothing to change the minds of the folks in the streets.

Facts are useless when you know in your heart what really happened. Knowing stuff without—or in the teeth of—the evidence is what we do here on planet earth.

Hasn't been a problem so far, right?