Every day for the last three years, an average of 10 people or more in Texas are put behind the bars and charged simply with resisting arrest. But what the misrule is resisting arrest? The Texas Penal Code, Section 38.03, explains resisting arrest as deliberately stopping or standing in the way of a police officer from attaining an arrest by utilising force against the law enforcer.
One might inquire – what does it mean to utilise “force against a police officer?” The Texas Legislature did not explain terms like force and against in the penal code. So Texas courts search to the simple meaning of words like force and against. Force, the courts utter, means brutal force, obligation, or restriction applied against a police officer while against means in resistance to or bitterness to or in conflict with. That is about as understandable as mud. To be assisting though, Texas courts describe it this way – “holding one’s arm away from a police officer’ confirmed grip during an arrest is sufficient to undergo a charge of resisting arrest”. What? Yes certainly, that’s absolutely right. Just dragging one’s arm away from the police officer is all it laid hold off to get charged with resisting arrest.
You believe that’s perplexing? Well go for this– Texas courts utter a person can explosively resist an arrest without fortunately making physical contact with the police officer making the arrest. What? That’s certainly true. You don’t have to assemble physical touch with the police officer at all. But let’s just say you strike with the foot at the police officer and miss. Well, that’s sufficient for the charge of resisting arrest.
All of that jotted down, what’s more difficult is this – when an individual is charged with resisting arrest, the grounds the individual was being arrested, in the initial place, is not a bit of the talk – at all. Presently, Texas law pronounces the protest, the detail, or the charge in the pursuit of resisting arrest does not have to record the basic offense for which the individual was resisting arrest. HB 521 was planned to put right to this legal nightmare by standing in the need of that the basic arrest be counted in the charge when an individual is simply charged with the offense of resisting arrest. This makes not only lawful sense but it makes common sense as well – omitting to the organizations constituting police officers.
When HB 521 recommended for a hearing in the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, only the police officer organizations had given evidence against it. Their reason for opposition was a bit not up to the mark, at best. Prevailed over, one advice is that the charge of resisting arrest has always been the police officer’s “difficult” position. When no other charge can be made – just apply the charge of resisting arrest
Sometimes, officers utilises “resisting arrest” as an odds and ends for any behaviour that makes an inquiry or arrest more tough. It may be difficult to believe that answering at a leisurely pace, or hesitantly to an officer’s general orders that could lead to a resisting arrest charge. But it’s certainly true; sometimes an arrest doesn’t require being in advancement to be charged with this crime.
