What? There Are Laws? : It’s futile to resist
Posted on Sunday, July 20, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/brog/News/62240/
Although we have had a pretty wet spring and beginning of summer, it’s obvious that temperatures are rising, and these changes always seem to bring a rise in crime.
For the most part, criminals are basically lazy creatures of habit. When it is warm and nice, they come out to wreak havoc. When it is rainy, they don’t want to get wet. When it is cold, they tend to stay where it is warm.
Over the years, it always seems to me things have happened on the hottest of days — when you will encounter a person who doesn’t like the police and is not going to go to jail willingly.
Years ago, on a sweltering day, I answered a call of a disturbance and was met in the yard by a very intoxicated individual who said he wanted to whip some pig butt (cleaning his language up a bit ), and said he wasn’t going to go to jail. Because of his intoxicated state and the fact that he had been beating up on his wife, he had to be taken into custody. As soon as he was told to turn around and place his hands behind his back, the fight was on.
While an assisting officer and I were trying to get the handcuffs on him, I suddenly had someone jump on my back. It was his wife. Also intoxicated, she was bleeding and screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs, telling us we weren’t going to take her kids’ daddy to jail.
As you can imagine, it was quite a scene — my partner on the ground wrestling with the guy and me trying to help him with a drunk and bleeding female on my back. We must have looked like a bunch of monkeys in a three-ring circus. We got the guy cuffed and quickly took care of cuffing the female and put both in separate cars.
Once we got to the police department, I tried to get the couple’s personal information, and they both gave false info. This added to their charges because in Arkansas, it is illegal to falsely identify yourself to a law-enforcement officer when questioned. Both of them were also charged with resisting arrest. The female was charged with interfering with a police officer because she attempted to stop me from my official duties by trying to restrain me with physical force.
The last two charges of the circus call were of public intoxication for both, and for the male, domestic battering in the first degree because it was later determined he had beaten his wife with an unloaded handgun. She was taken to the hospital, where she was treated for a superficial head wound and released back into our custody.
It just goes to show you how dysfunctional some people are. She stood by her man all the way, from his conviction to the state penitentiary, where he remained for several years.
• • • James “ Rusty ” Rusterholz has more than 12 years of experience as an Arkansas lawenforcement officer. He now works as the investigator for the State Public Defender’s Office in Benton County. If you have any questions, contact him at arklawinfo 01 @ cox. net. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not represent legal advice.