As I write this, more families have or are learning that their loved one will never come home. Others are having their lives changed, hopefully only temporarily, but most likely irrevocably at least in the short term. Why? For no other reason than to spread the pain after others lost their lives last week. Just pure hate or blind revenge.
I have written on this topic before and am simply aghast that we continue to go down this road. Let me break it down again. If you resist the police, their job is to escalate force until they subdue you, up to and including lethal force. There is not an option for them to simply let you go. Their oath requires that they subdue you and present you to the courts to make a determination on guilt, innocence and punishment if guilty.
They cannot keep their oath and say, “Well its a black male who seems to have been discriminated against so I will just let him go.” They cannot keep their oath and say, “Well this is a rich white person who pays a lot of taxes, so I will just let him go.” Yes, they can decide to write an appearance ticket in lieu of taking you in, but resisting is not going to make them want to make this choice. Instead resisting is only going to make them see you as violent and a threat to yourself and others. That will make them want to put you in a place that the damage you can cause is contained. Indeed, that is their duty.
I understand some of the emotion on the sides of Black Lives Matter and other movements that shine a light on police and their use of force. There are some cases where the facts they uncover put the actions of the police in poor light. But there are many others, where the facts tend to support the action the police took. This is what freedom of speech is for. We can question the actions of police and our civil government without retribution. But, do you really lend credibility to your voices if you reflexively choose one side every time based only on race and irregardless of the facts?
Let us take another tact here. If you resist an officer, what is your best outcome? You get away without inflicting harm on the officer. Then, you will be constantly looking over your shoulder as his or her over one million brother and sister officers look for you. Not Good. Next best option, you hurt or kill the officer and get away. now those over one million brother and sister officers have you at the top of their list. They will hunt you. And, if you seriously injured or killed their fellow officer, they will hunt you with an assumption of danger to the task. Which means the lower levels of force escalation will be skipped when they find you. (In case that was too obtuse for you, they will come for you with guns blazing.) Worst case, they shoot you dead right on the spot.
Now let us look at your other option. If you do not resist the officer and instead are polite and obey the officer at every turn. What is the worst that can happen? You get cuffed and put into a car and taken to jail and eventually stand before a judge. You get a lawyer to represent you before the judge. You can contact your family and news media and shed light on your case. Eventually the truth of whether you are guilty or not comes to light and you either serve a sentence or get released. And, the state is responsible for your welfare every step of the way while you are in custody. Meaning if you do happen to be harmed, it will be quickly made public and while this is little consolation to you, addressed. Best case scenario, the officer talks to you and lets you go either with or without a ticket.
Now add to that equation above, officers are human. They are subject to human likes and dislikes and yes, prejudice and hate. But, that also means they are subject to the all too human reflex to treat others how others treat them. If you are polite and nice and make their job easy. They will for the most part, reflexively return the favor and be polite and nice and work to make your experience with them easy. Doesn’t mean they won’t arrest you if you have broken the law. But, it does mean that as a rule, they won’t tighten the cuffs or otherwise work to make your stay in their custody as unpleasant for you as you make it for them.
Yes, you may encounter one of the very small percentage of bad police or corrections officers and they may abuse you. But, during your trip through our justice system you will come in contact with other officers and judges and lawyers. Odds are if you come in peacefully, the good officers will note that. And they will, if not react to your particular circumstances, note your complaint about that officer. And eventually over time through more complaints, that officer will be exposed and removed. Mainly they will be removed because if they are truly abusive, they endanger their fellow officers and make their jobs harder. It is in the interest of every officer and indeed everyone associated with the justice system to remove such officers who either are racist, mean, or just plain have poor judgement from the system.
Now let’s flip the coin and look at the situation from an officers point of view. If he or she pulls the trigger, whether the person being shot is black, white, Hispanic or other, that officers career is likely over. This is due to the litigious society that now exists. He or she may do everything right and the shooting may be by the book justified, and still the department they work for may cut them loose to protect themselves from lawsuits. Even worse, if there is even the slightest doubt, or a problem with the officers narrative not lining up exactly with the objective facts borne out by evidence, they may lose their freedom as well. They know this. They see the system work daily.
The only reason a police officer in his right mind would pull the trigger is fear. Fear that their life is going to end if they do not shoot. Every officer is different. They each have different perceptions of danger. What will drive one to fire, might not drive another. Does that necessarily mean that the one who fired was not justified? We need objective criteria to determine when it is justifiable for an officer to fire. The only objective way to determine this is calmly without prejudice in the light of day by looking at the evidence.
Now I will close on a quote from a great man:
“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
(The above quote is taken from his Nobel Lecture in 1964.)
