AGAIN AND AGAIN

And now, Tyre Nichols.

Another chance to demonstrate we haven't learned a thing from the Rodney King beating or from any of the other videos that have surfaced since.

So, what should we have learned from Rodney King? That the police will beat you until you comply with their demands—demands shouted by multiple officers in great excitement in the beginning, which can be confusing, demands long since gone silent as the action drags on: Get on your belly with your hands behind your back.

Once you begin to fight the police, this is the only position they will respond to. Until you get into this position, they will continue to deliver pain: by baton, by Taser, by pepper spray, by fist, by service boot.

These are the only tools the police have, and they are all designed to deliver pain in an attempt to coerce you into changing your mind and agreeing to cooperate with the arrest now in progress.

They hurt you because it's simply all they have in their arsenal.

(Unless, of course, they are demons straight out of hell. Those guys hurt you because they like it. Defunding those cops wouldn't help; you'd have to exorcise the bastards.)

What cops need, of course, was demonstrated in the opening minutes of Star Wars (Episode 4: A New Hope). Princess Leia has delivered the plans of the Death Star to the droid, R2D2. Storm troopers find her, she attempts to flee, and she's zapped with a phazer (or whatever they call it), set to "stun."

And down she goes. No fuss, no muss: instant unconsciousness.

If cops had that, every disputed arrest would end in a hurry. With no life-threatening beating, and no gunshots to center mass.

Giving in to the idea of arrest is not an admission of guilt. It's a sign of intelligence. It's an acknowledgment of reality.

When the officer says "turn around and put your hands behind your back," do it. Don't just stand your ground and demand to know why.

Asking why is a violation of law. It's called "resisting arrest."

You don't have to fight the cops to be guilty of resisting arrest. Anything you do or say that delays the officer in the performance of his duties is an instance of resisting arrest.

(By the way, depending upon where you live, resisting arrest may also apply to EMTs. Say you're walking along the road and an ambulance pulls along side. The driver wants to know where Main Street is. If you purposely point the guy in the wrong direction, you may be guilty of "resisting arrest.")

So, was the Tyre Nichols case a situation where a guy put his health in danger by refusing to cooperate with his arrest? Probably.

But there are questions.

People (including the Chief of the Memphis Police) are questioning whether the cops had any reason for stopping Nichols in the first place.

The cops on the scene say he was guilty of reckless driving, but the video shows none of that. It starts with Nichols being dragged out of his car.

Folks are starting to wonder: Was the guy just targeted at random?

Well, what if he were? Does that change anything?

Not really. Cops are gifted by sworn oath with the privilege of arrest. You have to go along with that, or the whole system falls apart.

You may not know why they are yanking you out of your car, but you don't need to. If you have good reason to believe those guys are police officers, you have to comply.

Call their bluff. Let the cops put their careers on the line. Smile (to yourself) and daydream about what you're going to do with all the money you're going to get when you sue the police department.

Let 'em cuff you and put you in the back of a squad car (watch your head getting in).

Maybe they'll come over to talk to you. Maybe they'll begin to see they've made a mistake and let you go. (You could still probably sue for emotional distress.)

On the other hand, maybe it takes a Zen Master to submit to an arrest he knows is bogus.

(But before you get all self-righteous, remember you're just a human being, and as such you're probably so mentally defective you're wrong about pretty much everything and the cops were right to grab you. Too bad the cops are also human.)

Bottom line: Resist arrest and the cops will hurt you. Guaranteed.

They HAVE to. Pain is the only tool in their arrest kit. Star Wars phazers are literally fictional, at this time. Maybe in the future...

But here's a solution that could be applied immediately: change the law.

If the guy doesn't want to be arrested, let him go.

You heard me.

So long as the cops remind the guy that walking away has its cost. If he is later arrested and convicted of the crime in question, the penalties will be double.

Double the fine, double the jail time, etc. Maybe triple.

Cops wouldn't like it, because they like to finish what they start, but we could change the law at once.

And frankly, cops shouldn't be too negative about the idea.

Fact is, a lot can go haywire during an arrest. If pain doesn't change the guy's mind, the last resort is to swarm him. Cops will likely be hurt, get an elbow in the nose or something. A guy on angel's dust might take seven or eight cops to subdue him.

That's a lot of moving parts.

Letting the guy walk away is an option worth considering. With caveats:

If the guy was driving, he has to leave on foot.

If a weapon is involved, all bets are off.

Another way to avoid arrest situations: turn a lot of crimes into citation offenses. No arrest necessary. Or transform unwanted events from criminal to civil.

In the Tyre Nichols case, if he was indeed driving recklessly, and it took some effort to get at him, yanking the man out of the car was probably warranted.

And the guy absolutely refused to cooperate with the arrest. He even got away and ran off. Cops had to go after him and physically place him in custody. It was messy, to say the least.

But once in police control, as shown in the last parts of the video, the cops kept hitting the man, with fist and baton. Why? Were they trying to get him to do something he wasn't willing to do? We don't know.

Were the cops expressing their frustration by acting out? That's a crime.

After it was over, they let the fellow languish on the ground. And apparently EMTs took their time getting to work.

Were more crimes committed here, by the cops and others? Absolutely.

Could all of this been avoided if Nichols had consented to the arrest in the first place? Almost certainly.

From Rodney King onward, the vast majority of these horrible, violent videos only shows the inevitable aftermath of a decision by the perp to avoid arrest.

Showing tape of a cuffed man being placed in a squad car is not newsworthy, so we don't see much of that on the nightly broadcast. After all, if it bleeds, it leads. But if it just gets in the car, it falls to the cutting room floor.

Can we humans learn to be arrested without the carnage? Beats me.

But probably not...

Black men especially may view arrest as a form of lynching. So they fight back, insuring the worst. Good idea? No. But it's what you have to expect from humans.

We're not just our own worst enemy. We're everybody's worst enemy.