There seems to be a great deal of people in America that don't understand how the police work. By not understanding this simple concept they put themselves in harms way. Police officers are trained to take control of the situation when they arrive on the scene and maintain that control throughout the investigation until it is resolved.
If they suspect that a crime has been committed and they have to arrest someone, they have the authority to use as much force as necessary to accomplish that arrest, including lethal force. Now the original crime may have been a misdemeanor with just a fine to pay but if the suspect resists arrest he commits a felony in the presents of the officer leaving the officer no recourse but to arrest that individual.
So resisting arrest just puts people in harms way when they may have only a minor infraction to answer for, there by causing bodily injury or death to the suspect. Plus, only about one percent of resisters escape prosecution and it hardly makes good sense. This appears to be caused by disrespect for the law and we need to get a handle on it.
So, what do I think is the cause of all this disrespect for the law?
We all need to be taught to be responsible for our actions and we need that taught at a very early age. "I offer a free report on this subject on my blog"
This is as hard to teach as it is hard to learn and an awful lot of parents give up way short of the goal and this gets translated into generation after generation of children growing into adulthood and never having to pay for their mistakes.
By not having to pay for your mistakes you lose the ability to rationally asses the end result and make an intelligent decision to not do something that may cause others harm or endanger themselves.
There are other factors that drive people to do wrong, but by far, if most would have been taught early to weigh the worst case ending against the pleasure of doing whatever, they would realize most times it isn't worth it.
Unfortunately it has progressed for several generations and involves so many people that we will never be able to correct it so we will just have to live with the criminal element in our lives and hope our law enforcement can keep up without over reaching their authority.
As an aside I do feel that there are some officers who could stand training in people skills and there are some people who could stand some training in proper interaction with police. If we can get that done we could go a long way to solving the understanding gap between the factions.
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