Another Thurber Brigade Sidestep
Okay, by now you're shrugging your shoulders and saying, "oh
great, once again he proves he can't stay on topic." Well you're right,
but it is with just cause. As you know, I've done a lot of research on police violence, tried to get a book published, settled for an article. So you'll have
to excuse me if I go off topic when confronted by police malfeasance. And if it
seems like I'm doing it more and more it's because it seems to be making the news more and more.
Police bad behavior isn't new. In fact, I believe it's been at a
pretty high level for some time. It's just that now it seems to be reported
more often. This is largely because people are reporting it more and more on
social media. This makes it hard for the mainstream media to ignore it as they
did in the past.
They ignored it in the past because they subscribed to the police
motto "To Maintain and Control." Maintain the status quo, control the
population (serve and protect is just a PR campaign). After all, since the mainstream
media is corporate controlled they are part of the status quo.
So I don't intend to mention the recent Baltimore murder of a
civilian whose only offense was running while being black. Nor will I go into
the case of yet another cop killing an unarmed civilian (so common now it's
like reporting about a traffic accident. Yawn). No this blog is about the fake
crime of "resisting arrest."
Resisting arrest is one of the police’s favorite charges against a
"perp." However, in probably nine out of 10 cases it doesn't make
sense. For example, a year ago the Austin police arrested a female teenage
jogger for jaywalking. Yes, two burly cops stopped this young girl for crossing
the street and when she began to complain they cuffed her. She was resisting
arrest.
But wait you say, jaywalking isn't an arrestable offense. You give the
person a ticket. So since there wasn't a crime to arrest her for, and because
they got pissed off at her complaining, they said she was resisting. Okay, they
also said she “failed to identify.” This is just as illogical, since I don’t
know many joggers who carry their wallet while running, but maybe that will be
another blog.
(You are probably also saying to yourself, "wait a minute, weren't Austin Police recently asking for more money?" Yes, they need more money to stop the lawless jaywalkers of the city. A big crime here in Austin. Violent crime must be down so they need more money to police people walking across the street. Sorry, got carried away)
Over and over we see this in the news. Someone arrested for
resisting. However, the majority of the time there is no crime. It's not like
the person robbed a bank, then ran as the police came up. No, it's that the
police pulled someone over for a broken taillight, the person gave the cop some
lip, and next thing we know: resisting arrest.
To me, they might as well be honest and just say they are
arresting the person because he/she pissed the cop off.
I’m lucky they haven’t pulled me over lately because surely I’d be
“Arrested for Sarcasm,” or “Arrested for Making a Snide Remark to an Officer” or even worse, "being flip with a law enforcement person."
It would help the average civilian if police wore some sort of
device that would indicate the mood the cop was currently experiencing. You
know, something like those devices you can wear to see how much you are being
exposed to radiation. These would instead indicate the emotional state of the
officer.
This way if you were stopped by a cop and his mood badge if bright red,
you’d know that his wife just screamed at him as he left for work and you don’t
want to say something snarky to the guy.
In other words, we would nearly wipe out the bogus charge of “resisting arrest” if we only knew how angry or demented the person stopping us had become.
I have to admit I’m also glad that the NSA, FBI and other law enforcement agencies haven’t tried to arrest me for “satirical tirades aimed at the law” via their wiretapping programs. Yes, I’d be locked up for a lonnnngggg time.
