A cop’s best friend: resisting arrest

2004.03.05 — Culture | Law | by Derek Jensen

Dudley Hiibel (híibel) was probably drunk. And he was definitely belligerent. He dared the cops to arrest him, offered no resistance. Did he hit his 17-year-old daughter Mimi in his pickup truck? Who knows? Certainly not the cops. But they arrested him anyway. On what charges? Battery and "delaying a peace officer."

Hiibel was questioned by Nevada sheriff's deputies when they arrived on the scene where the man was having a cigarette on the side of the road by his truck. They had gotten a call, they said, that there was "some fighting" going on, but refused to elaborate (they were "investigating an investigation," one tells Hiibel on the video). Hiibel denied any wrongdoing, asked the deputy if he was illegally parked (he was not), but refused to show any identification.

The cop was irritated. He wanted compliance. The cowboy was angry. He wanted to be left alone. After refusing to show any identification several times and demanding that the cops arrest him if he had done anything wrong, they arrested him. No muss. No fuss.

Now, judge for yourself on the video as to whether or not Hiibel seemed drunk. He does to me. That seems like probable cause to arrest him. But he wasn't charged with drunk driving (he wasn't driving). He wasn't even charged with public intoxication (which might have stuck). He was charged with assaulting his daughter, but she denied it, so the cops dropped the charges... except for "delaying a peace officer." What is that? If Hiibel delayed the cops, it certainly wasn't intentional; they stopped to talk to him of their own accord, and he clearly had no interest in delaying them. And the one thing you can absolutely see for yourself is that Hiibel does not resist arrest. He practically demands it.

Now, daughter Mimi does resist arrest. Wait... wasn't she the victim? Why was she arrested? No one knows. While her handcuffed father taunts the cops with "Real big men," a deputy pulls Mimi out of the truck against her will, forces her to the ground and handcuffs her—for no reason at all. It's astonishing. The charge against her was dropped because... well, because she hadn't done anything wrong in the first place.

In the last few years, resisting arrest (and synonym charges like "delaying a peace officer") has become the cop's best friend as a criminal charge. It's very subjective—unlike a breathalyzer—and carries only a minor penalty, so people aren't likely to complain much about the indignity (Dudley Hiibel was fined $250, which he is appealing). To justify it, the police can accuse the suspect of all manner of wrongdoing and then drop the other charges later without danger of being accused of false arrest. After all, the suspect resisted, right? That's cause enough. As a result, lawmen have the perfect excuse to arrest anyone they want, anytime, anywhere.

Think about that for a moment. All a cop has to do is make a few unreasonable demands—"What's your name? What are you doing here? Let's see some ID. Where are you going?"—to get you a little irritated, then he can arrest you and charge you with "delaying" him, "impeding" his investigation, and "resisting" arrest. And he doesn't have to have a lick of proof that you were ever actually committing a crime in the first place.

Surely they wouldn't abuse this kind of power, would they? Well, during the World Trade Organization meetings in Florida in November, the cops arrested numerous people—not all of them protesters even—and charged them with "resisting arrest without violence." I've seen documentary video of some of it, and the people are absolutely not resisting in any way, even passively. They offer their hands, obey the cops' orders, and go where they are told to go.

Now, I favor free trade. I think the protesters are misguided. The problem is that so did the cops, in a big way. They had been told in no uncertain terms that, if the protesters got their way, it would hurt them personally in the pocketbook. Result: lots of arrests, very flimsy charges... and even more abusive behavior that didn't result in documented arrests.

Dudley Hiibel's complaint that it is unconstitutional to arrest someone for refusing to identify himself (which Nevada law requires, but with which he was not charged) was denied by the Nevada Supreme Court. The story's not over. We're likely to see formal challenges on the constitutionality of this sort of "identity search-and-seizure," and some fundamental principles of policing may change.

...Like arresting people because you don't like their attitude.

f e e d b a c k

s i d e b a r