Postal worker arrested for no reason, mail truck left unattended

[Cheerful Charlie]

Am I the only one here who is offended by this old "resisting arrest" crap?

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Yep. I've seen hard-of-hearing folks threatened with arrest for "resisting arrest" when they could not hear a police officer's "order".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yep. I've seen hard-of-hearing folks threatened with arrest for "resisting arrest" when they could not hear a police officer's "order".

What happens is the police assume the person they are arresting knows they're guilty and knows what's going on.

In the real world sometimes they get the wrong guy who doesn't recognize the person is a plainclothes policeman, sometimes they're deaf, sometimes they don't speak English etc.

 

[Nexus]

There needs to be a serious discussion about no longer having resisting arrest as a crime. The police have abused it too much. Although they might just start planting drugs on people instead.

 

[beero1000]

Yep. I've seen hard-of-hearing folks threatened with arrest for "resisting arrest" when they could not hear a police officer's "order".

What happens is the police assume the person they are arresting knows they're guilty and knows what's going on.

In the real world sometimes they get the wrong guy who doesn't recognize the person is a plainclothes policeman, sometimes they're deaf, sometimes they don't speak English etc.

... and sometimes they aren't actually resisting. Seems like you forgot that one. By accident, no doubt.

 

[laughing dog]

Analogy fail. It would be more akin to the following:

Someone comes in with wet hair and you say "There have been several incidents lately of people getting buckets of water thrown on them, making their hair wet. Although it is raining outside, there's a good chance a bucket was also thrown on them to make their hair wet."

Given that it is raining outside and someone comes in with wet hair, it is far more likely that only the rain made their hair wet than that both the rain and a bucket made the hair wet.

Without addressing your lame analogy, your reasoning fails. This is not about likelihoods.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There needs to be a serious discussion about no longer having resisting arrest as a crime. The police have abused it too much. Although they might just start planting drugs on people instead.

I don't mind having resisting arrest be a crime. I think the fix should come from elsewhere--cameras. Make body and car cameras mandatory. Furthermore, anything that should have been recorded but wasn't (except due to actions of the bad guys) the police can't testify to. The police can still testify to things that the cameras couldn't catch (it's not yet practical to make a camera that can record as much as a person can observe) so it's much harder for them to claim things that didn't happen.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

There needs to be a serious discussion about no longer having resisting arrest as a crime. The police have abused it too much. Although they might just start planting drugs on people instead.

Sometimes people do resist arrest, sometimes dangerously, shooting at police, physically fighting them and so on. But all too often the police do abuse that claim, sometimes outright lying about it. THAT offends me deeply.